Dorsía Smith Silva’s debut poetry collection, In Inheritance of Drowning, is described as “a memorable debut collection that explores colonial and generational trauma.”  With a foreword by Vincent Toro, the book will be published this fall (November 2024) by CavanKerry Press. It is now available for pre-ordering.

Shara McCallum (author of No Ruined Stone) describes the book: “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. Wide seeing and searing, In Inheritance of Drowning looks unflinchingly at violence and iniquity while testifying to Black and Caribbean people’s survival.”

Description: In this striking debut, Dorsía Smith Silva explores the devastating effects of Hurricane María in Puerto Rico, highlighting the natural world, the lasting impact of hurricanes, and the marginalization of Puerto Ricans. These poems also focus on the multiple sites of oppression in the United States, especially the racial, social, and political injustices that occur every day. Smith Silva writes with a powerful, gripping voice, confronting the “drowning” of disenfranchised communities as they are displaced, exploited, and robbed of their identities, but remain resilient. Written with unflinching language and vivid imagery, In Inheritance of Drowning reveals the many facets of the lives of marginalized people.

Dorsía Smith Silva is a Pushcart Prize nominee, Best of the Net finalist, Best New Poets nominee, Obsidian Fellow, poetry editor of The Hopper, and professor at the University of Puerto Rico-Río Piedras. Her poetry has been published in the Denver Quarterly, Waxwing, Cream City Review, and elsewhere. She is the author of Good Girl, editor of Latina/Chicana Mothering, and the coeditor of seven books.

She has a Ph.D. in Caribbean Literature and Language, and her primary interests are ecopoetry, social and racial justice, mothering and motherhood, and migration.  She has also received support from Bread Loaf 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.

For more on the author, see https://www.pw.org/directory/writers/dorsia_smith_silva

For more information on the book, see https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/I/bo238316878.html and https://shop.harvard.com/book/9781960327079