Critic Reviews
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY REVIEW Publishers Weekly Book Review
Smith Silva navigates the treacherous waters of displacement and survival in the wake of natural disaster in this luminous and innovative debut. Centered on Hurricane María’s devastation of Puerto Rico in 2017, these poems excavate the enduring impacts of colonialism, racism, and environmental catastrophe on marginalized communities. In “The Awakening of Hurricane María,” Smith Silva captures the storm’s disorientation and trauma: “Thunder shutters/ through the treetops, while lightening siphons/ off the breath like fragrant heat.” Elsewhere, she shifts from intimate familial portraits to broader meditations on systemic injustice. Poems such as “Everyday Drowning” and “While Black” confront racial violence and oppression in the United States, while others probe identity and belonging as a Puerto Rican. With a finely tuned ear for rhythm and syntax, Smith Silva unearths unexpected beauty amid devastation, insisting on a resilience that envisions “uncombed/ gardens last where only hurricanes stay.” This noteworthy collection bears unflinching witness to calamity while still kindling hope for renewal.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY POETRY BOOKLIST for FALL 2024 Publishers Weekly Poetry Booklist for Fall 2024
Ms. Magazine POETRY BOOKLIST for 2024 and 2025 Ms. Magazine Poetry Booklist for 2024 and 2025
JACKET2 REVIEW Jacket2 Book Review
TERRAIN REVIEW Terrain Book Review
THE HOPKINS REVIEW The Hopkins Book Review
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
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