Silencio

A lyrically haunting and powerful account of women surviving femicide and destruction in Mexico.

Silencio tells the story of Águeda, a young woman mourning the death of her mother. When the townspeople deny her a grave in the local cemetery, the mother’s bodyvanishes. Águeda knows her father is hiding it, and when she confronts him, hepunishes her defiance with confinement.

Serving her sentence in a house, Águeda lives within those walls as if in asecond maternal womb – one that will transform her. In chapters alternating between the real and the imaginary, she mourns the destroyed futures of thosewho were silenced as she listens to her neighbours’ stories of loss – a childworker; a boy from the Tacuate community; and Mexican refugees in Canada. Through the walls, she senses the world: birds in dialogue, the beauty of thearid landscape, experiences of love and devastation. She comes to realize thatin this mountain region that resembles the author’s hometown of Oaxaca, where organised crime holds sway, many – like her – mourn their dead and search for the disappeared.

In her second book to be translated into English, Clyo Mendoza transcends thelimits of language and realism to represent with lyric brutality the unspeakable violence in towns where narcotrafficking rules.

"Few writers can pack so much mystery, heart, and truth into a single sentence. Silencio is a book, but also a spell—one you want tofall under." —Daniel Saldaña Paris, author of Planes Flying Over a Monster