Dorsía Smith Silva’s Debut Poetry Collection Explores the Aftermath of Hurricane Maria

Black poet Dorsía Smith Silva focuses her work on the Puerto Rican community, the injustices the island currently faces at the hands of the U.S., and the intrinsic connection between BIPOC and environmental disasters. In addition to editing and co-editing multiple anthologies about Caribbean literature, mothering, and motherhood, she has published a micro-chapbook of poetry as part of a poetry series. In November 2024, she published her debut full-length collection of poetry, In Inheritance of Drowning, which explores the devastating effects of Hurricane María in 2017 in Puerto Rico. Not only does she highlight the lasting impact of hurricanes on land and people, but she also demonstrates the different ways in which the island is oppressed by the U.S. in racial, social, and political ways. Exploring colonialism, generational trauma, exploitation, and collective resilience, this book shines a spotlight on the community and lived experiences that are often overlooked.

“The story of Hurricane María is too significant not to be told,” Smith Silva tells HipLatina. “Too many people are unaware of how much devastation Hurricane María caused Puerto Ricans. [In the book], I mention several statistics, such as how some Puerto Ricans were almost a year without electricity and how thousands of people died in the aftermath. In addition, the problems in Puerto Rico were compounded because the United States either did not offer adequate assistance or give offered assistance too late. Overall, Hurricane María highlighted how Puerto Rico has been drowning with colonialism for a long time.”

The book is already such an important entry in the larger scheme of the Puerto Rican diaspora, specifically in literature and poetry written by people from the island. Interestingly enough, she had no idea she was writing a poetry collection at the time she was writing, which was in the midst of Hurricane María. Living on the island and steeped in survival mode, she wrote enough in her notebook to capture words and phrases, and sometimes full works of prose, lyric, and narrative poems. But it wasn’t until long after the hurricane was over that she was able to return to the notebook and create something new out of everything her former self had left for her to find.

However, as Smith Silva began the formal composition process, she knew immediately what she wanted the emotional center of the collection to be and how to structure it.

“I knew that I wanted the collection to be framed by Hurricane María. This devastating storm was the catalyst for the book, so the opening and concluding poems recognize its strong impact,” she says. “But in addition to writing poems about Hurricane María, I was also composing poems about our racial, social, political struggles in the United States. These poems formed the second section of the book, while the hurricane poems function like bookends—they are the first and third sections of In Inheritance of Drowning.”

One aspect of the hurricane that she knew she wanted to emphasize was global warming, specifically the destruction of our natural environment and how BIPOC often bear the worst effects of increasingly dangerous weather. From hurricanes to droughts to floods, our communities are already disenfranchised but are put at higher risk in adverse conditions. For example, we’re more likely to live in less structurally sound dwellings or be unhoused altogether, as well as in hard-to-reach areas, cut off from aid or resources.

As a resident on the island, Smith Silva saw firsthand the threats that Hurricane María posed for the community, not just herself. In one of her poems “What the Poet is Supposed to Write about a Hurricane,” she is conflicted about how to accurately write about a hurricane in her work as it truly felt in the moment she was experiencing it versus how she should represent it: “What the poet is supposed to write about a hurricane / should be skylights of horror / not skip rocks of beauty in walls of wind…How the lively whips should stun the mouths of gravity / hissing without hesitation / engulfing the stench of uprooted dirt and grass.”

After all, hurricanes are natural weather occurrences and should, to some extent, be appreciated as an expression of the earth to cleanse itself and be rid of negative forces. But to what end, when so many lives are impacted and lost because of them? In writing these poems, she searched for how to best represent hurricanes in all of their complexity.

“I was hoping to draw more attention to how humans have to be more connected to the environment to stop global warming, since the increase of global warming is tied to the increase of the frequency and intensity of hurricanes. I hope when readers finish the book that will be ready for that social change,” she says.

For Smith Silva, the collection also allowed her to continue honing her creative process. Throughout a poet’s life, their approach to their work can ebb, flow, and change, especially when it comes to certain projects. This book in particular presented an array of unique challenges that she had to answer, but it ultimately helped her understand herself and her craft a bit better.

“A poem is done when it leaves me breathless. It is really an intuitive response. After I read a poem, I am processing my reaction. It should be, ‘That’s powerful. Wow!’ If I do not generate that kind of enthusiasm—-that kind of emotion—then I have to sit with the poem,” she explains. “I reread it and look at the line breaks. I review the form, precision, and figurative language. I will ask myself a series of questions: ‘Are these adjectives necessary? Are these images fresh? Is there a surprise for the reader?’ Sometimes, the revision process takes days, weeks, or months.”

In fact, one of the poems in the collection, “Mad Love for Philly,” took her two whole years to complete because the format never felt quite right during its original creation, nor in its subsequent drafts. Until a small but important revision changed everything.

“Once I realized that I should use the double backlash to separate the stanzas and flow of the poem, then everything else fell into place,” she says. “Sometimes, a poem needs time to fully develop and the poet has to wait until what the poem needs is conveyed to the poet.”

In addition to publishing poetry and other creative work, Smith Silva is a full Professor of English at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras. In this role, she’s able to share her love of the written word and promote literature written by women of color to her students, many of whom go on to read works written by other BIPOC women. Her syllabus and reading lists often include the greats like Sandra Cisneros, Elizabeth Acevedo, Gloria Anzaldúa, Cristina García, Jamaica Kincaid, Gwendolyn Brooks, Nikki Giovanni, Audre Lorde, Joy Harjo, Louise Erdich, Natalie Diaz, Maxine Hong Kingston, Amy Tan, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Naomi Shihab Nye. She’s been able to work with students outside the classroom, appearing on episodes of podcasts they host to discuss her work and the marginalization of Puerto Rico before, during, and after Hurricane María.

She hopes that all of her poems give voice to the hardships our communities face, as well as how resilient and strong we are in the face of it. She notes:

“I am deeply proud of the entire collection. In Inheritance of Drowning not only recognizes Puerto Rico, but it also gives a powerful voice to Black and brown communities. I think the most challenging poems were those that focused on the historical injustices, such as the lackluster response of FEMA to provide essential supplies to Puerto Rico after Hurricane Rico, long lists of victims of police brutality, and the colonial relationship between Puerto Rico and the United States. They were not challenging to write, but they are sometimes painful to read when I think of how these gross atrocities are woven into the fabric of our society. In Inheritance of Drowning is pushing for the end of these kinds of drownings—the time is now for social transformation.”