In Inheritance of Drowning

In Inheritance of Drowning begins with the exploration of the devastating Hurricane María in Puerto Rico. Written with vivid imagery, these poems highlight the natural world, significant impact of hurricanes, and marginalization of Puerto Ricans. The collection also explores the multiple sites of oppression in the United States, especially the racial, social, and political injustices and intersections of race and violence. Dorsía Smith Silva’s powerful voice confronts the “drowning” of BIPOC communities as they are displaced, exploited, and robbed of their identities and witnesses their resistance and resilience. In this memorable debut, Smith Silva’s In Inheritance of Drowning will grip and enrich readers.

Dorsía Smith Silva is a poetry editor ofThe Hopper and professor of English at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras. Her poetry has been published in the Denver Quarterly, Waxwing, Shenandoah, and elsewhere. She is also the editor ofLatina/Chicana Mothering, and the coeditor of seven books. She has received scholarships and fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing and is a member of the Get the Word Out poetry cohort of Poets & Writers in 2024. She has a PhD in Caribbean Literature and Language and posts on social media @DSmithSilva.

from Drowning in 5 Parts

How much for freedom? It’s a trick question. You can never pay enough. You will always owe someone or something.

Haiti paid France $30 billion for its independence.

Puerto Rico: How much can I pay?

US: Give me your land, people, language, food, culture, and flag. Maybe then we’ll talk.

Puerto Rico: No es justo.

US: Take it or leave it.

Our dreams are free.

We run like stray horses in the mountains. No light for good luck. Who needs it anyway? When there’s no want of stars to give us lifeblood.

from Ghost Talker Poem

& for the black girls
that go missing from
newspaper headlines &
spotlight 5 pm news. What
happened to them? Kick
the can over. See if the bones
glint in the slips of sunshine.
Press your ears against the
grass. Listen to what bleeds.

In Inheritance of Drowning, Dorsía Smith Silva’s powerful debut collection trains a lens on the history and ecology of Puerto Rico and mainland US. In poems of ethical witness, Smith Silva documents the linkages between slavery and present-day police brutality and racism, between recent, devastating hurricanes in the Caribbean and colonialism, past and present. Wideseeing and searing, In Inheritance of Drowning looks unflinchingly at violence and iniquity while testifying to Black and Caribbean people’s survival.
—Shara McCallum, author of No Ruined Stone

In Dorsía Smith Silva’s astonishing new collection, In Inheritance of Drowning, we encounter a voice that understands violence, silence, loss, and the power of undertow. This is a voice that understands “fret” sounds like “forget,” especially as winds and waves accrue, along with lost Brown and Black bodies. Page after page, this overwhelming rush of rivers and blood reminds us we must not forget, as the list of names grows like a gathering storm, that those bodies whirl further and further away from their names.
—Frances Richey, author of The Warrior: A Mother’s Story of a Son at War and The Burning Point

Like the eye of a hurricane where the storm is most still, around which its intensities swirl, Dorsía Smith Silva gathers vivid language for subjects as urgent and complex as anti-Blackness and climate catastrophe. In Inheritance of Drowning begins with moving examinations of Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricanes Irma and María. The collection ripples out from this center, moving from the particulars of family and community to political and ecological considerations that span oceans and borders. From the seasonal rituals of preparing for a storm’s landfall to observations of the natural world transformed in its aftermath, Silva’s debut is dynamic and moving in its vision. 
—Derrick Austin, author of Black Sand, Tenderness, and Trouble the Water 

Dorsía Smith Silva’s In Inheritance of Drowning calls us in passionate and adventurous verse to look at the violence of drowning, literal and metaphorical. Hard-hitting, alliterative lines bear testimony to the battering Puerto Rico received as two hurricanes flattened the island while helpless humans fought for survival. Equally, the poems turn the light on drowning humanity, Black bodies caught in various shapes of neglect all over the USA. We welcome this fresh, fearless, and convincing voice.
—Velma Pollard, author of And Caret Bay Again: New and Selected Poems and Leaving Traces

104 pages
Dorsía Smith Silva
Pub date – November 2024
Trade paper – 6 x 9″
$18
ISBN:978-1-960327-07-9
Emerging Voices in Poetry