The Republics [Paperback]

“The Republics is a massively brilliant new work, a leap in literature we have not seen. It’s gripping, harrowing, and at times horrific while its form paradoxically is fresh, luscious, and original. Bypassing pity and transforming pain into language Handal stars. She has recorded like Alice Walker, Paul Celan, John Hershey, and Carolyn Forché some of the worst civilization has offered humankind and somehow made it art.”—Sapphire

"Playwright, editor, and poet Handal's fifth collection of poetry balances what she calls "flash reportages" with vivid lyric and image. Built out of a patchwork of powerful blocks of monologue or narrative, and threaded with Spanish and Haitian Creole, the book's texture parallels those of "a multicolored coat," "a mirror of unfinished voices," and "a scarf tangled in sepia." … The poems spring forth with a spontaneity and urgency that counterbalance the restrained flourishes of her previous work. Handal watches and waits to "catch what aches in beauty," telling stories of Haitians and Dominicans with searing honesty.… Handal artfully captures the desire, the rawness of life, and the "misery that burns the soul" of the people she encounters."
—Publishers Weekly
 

“The Republics is a startling piece of work. It’s tight and lyrical and surprising and, when it needs to be, heartbreaking. Nathalie Handal’s signature comes through loud and clear. It’s one of the most inventive books I’ve read by one of today’s most diverse writers.”
—Patricia Smith

“These ‘flash reportages’ by Nathalie Handal offer us new ways to think about both poetry and journalistic documentation. A dialogue of observers as they share a voice for the space of the poem. I love how it is the l%