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Don't Sleep, There Are SnakesBy: Daniel L. Everett Series: Vintage Departures Part passionate memoir, part scientific exploration, a life changing tale set among a small tribe of Amazonian Indians in Brazil that offers a riveting look into the nature of language, thought, and life itself. "Immensely interesting and deeply moving. One of the best books I have read."Lucy Dodwell, New Scientist A riveting account of the astonishing experiences and discoveries made by linguist Daniel
By: Daniel L. Everett | Series: Vintage DeparturesPart passionate memoir, part scientific exploration, a life-changing tale set among a small tribe of Amazonian Indians in Brazil that offers a riveting look into the nature of language, thought, and life itself.
"Immensely interesting and deeply moving.... One of the best books I have read."—Lucy Dodwell, New Scientist
A riveting account of the astonishing experiences and discoveries made by linguist Daniel Everett while he lived with the Pirahã, a small tribe of Amazonian Indians in central Brazil.
Daniel Everett arrived among the Pirahã with his wife and three young children hoping to convert the tribe to Christianity. Everett quickly became obsessed with their language and its cultural and linguistic implications. The Pirahã have no counting system, no fixed terms for color, no concept of war, and no personal property. Everett was so impressed with their peaceful way of life that he eventually lost faith in the God he'd hoped to introduce to them, and instead devoted his life to the science of linguistics.
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4.6 ★★★★★
Based on 126 reviews
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Product Reviews
★★★★★ 5
A brilliant poetic narrative whose lines leap off the pages which turn themselves.
Format: Paperback
When you get to the end, you wonder how Kaminsky worked his wondrous magic, how it's possible to think and write poetry like that. The poem is a story about Vasenka, a mythical town somewhere in the Ukraine, occupied by the Soviet army during an unspecified period of time. It is an allegory of the cruelty of occupation, the futility of the resistance of a few, and the deafness of the silent majority, a deafness that courageously resists the occupation and a deafness that hardens the heart and ignores the evil surrounding them. It could have happened anywhere anytime. The occupiers could have been Nazis, Ottoman Turks, American, English, or Spanish. The poetry is piercingly sharp, visionary, breathless and the metaphors are the likes of which you've never heard before, lines like “the sound we do not hear lifts the gulls off the water,” “Our hearing doesn't weaken, but something silent in us strengthens,” or “In these avenues, deafness is our only barricade.” This is drop-dead beautiful poetry.
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Reviewed in the United States on March 22, 2019
★★★★★ 5
Haunting Humanity lurks in war’s reactions.
Format: Kindle
The poem moves efficiently through the myriad experiences that result from deadly conflict with a nameless and menacing enemy.
I kept thinking I was reading a rendering of Kafka with the haunting glimpses of the horror of permanent victim hood.
Now I must study the Deaf Republic and hope for understanding.
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Reviewed in the United States on September 6, 2025
★★★★★ 5
Beautifully written.
Format: Paperback
I read this book in one sitting and discovered that tears are included with purchase. Story is broken up into acts, like a play, and is told completely in verse. Sign language images accompany several of the poems.
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Reviewed in the United States on April 4, 2025
★★★★★ 5
What is silence? Something of the sky in us.
Format: Paperback
Maybe the best poetry collection I've ever read. I rarely enjoy an entire collection. I usually like individual poems or even individual lines within a poem. Deaf Republic is a masterpiece. If I ever meet Ilya Kaminsky in real life, I might cry.
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Reviewed in the United States on July 23, 2023
★★★★★ 5
Worth the hype on NPR that led me here--I've found my new favorite book!
Format: Hardcover
As an Asian-American creative, I knew I'd love this when I first read a positive review for this online, and I was not disappointed once! The perspective is so unique--a Chinese girl in 1800s Georgia!--and the writing's mesmerizing. I wished this book could never end, and LOVED it for so many reasons:
The quick version:
-Have you ever read anything about Chinese-Americans living in the Reconstructionist South? Thought not. This book provides such a necessary historical lens into highly underrepresented people and untold stories--and does it with remarkable talent and grace. This alone is worth heavy consideration.
-Jo is a protagonist you can't help admiring - she's witty, a nonconformist by circumstance and by choice, and unafraid of getting back a little (or a lot) at people who've done her wrong.
-The narrative voice is unlike any I've ever seen before ("Mischief dangles from his smile") and there are great humorous moments.
-Great pun one-liners here and there - even Yours Truly, who admits to hating puns, likes how they're done here.
-A wonderful and dynamic supporting cast, including Jo's wry adoptive father, a socialite who reveals her cleverness with pepper, an enigmatic Southern Belle who becomes Jo's employer for the second time, and a stout-of-heart black boy that'll melt your cold dead heart. Also a very enthusiastic herding dog.
-A climax that honestly almost moved me to tears from the poignancy, but also the deep symbolism of how Jo's actions come to stand for so, so much more in those several pages.
-If you like to learn cool new words, you'll definitely learn a few by reading this.
-On a personal note, I was ecstatic to find references to Chinese knotting and barley tea, which I've grown up with, but never encountered in print before.
Stacey Lee isn't afraid to show how difficult it was to be Asian-American in post-Civil War Georgia: In the opening scene, Jo is fired from her job at a hat shop because of her ethnicity. Due to the Chinese Exclusion Act in effect at the time, Jo and her adoptive father are legally not US citizens and cannot even own land or rent; they're forced to live secretly as squatters in the basement of a family who prints a struggling local newspaper.
We also see realistic depictions of other social issues, like the initial implementation of segregation laws (which confuses Jo and her father, as they're neither black nor white), the erecting of Confederate statues, calls for women's suffrage (as well as the emergence of modern bicycles) treated with derision by many women who think the idea foolish, and white suffragists rejecting black women who support their ideals.
In all seriousness, get this book. If you have kids, get this for your kids. I rarely write book reviews, but I'm breaking the pattern because this novel is THAT good.
Come for the incredibly unique historical perspective that's surely the first of its kind ever published and shines a spotlight on sorely underwritten stories.
Stay for Jo's incredible strength, role model-ism, one-of-a-kind journey, and how her story reminds us all not just of the power of devastatingly clever puns, but the power that words give all of us in finding who we are and making the world a better place.
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Reviewed in the United States on September 25, 2019