InHERent

"Inherent by Lucia Orellana-Damacela are "mementos" bottled in the past so they don't get staled in the present. Moments inherited from matrilineal sequence, splashed with a few words in Spanish, the mother tongue, transmuting into an English language unfolding in surprising juxtapositions, which erode the feeling of strangeness and instill a sense of belonging. What is sought, is the inevitable tracing of an "embroidered past" embedded in remembrances from Ecuador, recipes and scents which are passed down to daughters, through objects or physical traits, such as a white tea set, an eyebrow, or the intrusion of an illness resonating in the light lingering after a storm in a distant part of the world. Fragments of a narrative, these poems speculate as they reflect an interiority grounded in the landscape of childhood and extending towards the future, knowing that blooming and rotting are processes inherent in every creation. " - Lila Zemborain, Associate Director, Creative Writing in Spanish, Dept. of Spanish and Portuguese, NYU;"Lucia Orellana Damacela's Inherent is a brilliant poetic excavation of life as a Latinoamerican. Her evocative lyricism perfectly dramatizes the longing of family and ancestral ties, moving back and forth between memory and the everyday, and mirroring theleaps and bounds made between the pain of cultural displacement and the promise of a better life. With tremendous dexterity, these poems express the fears of living a step away from tradition and the great comfort of family."- Gessy Alvarez, Digging Press ;"The world of Inherent is made of 'things hidden by shine, / foliage / wiped out by afternoon glare', collecting together memories of grandmothers, gardens, wild spaces, salt, mangos, pumpernickel toast, mementos and inheritances. There is a fierce, family-focused feminism running throughout this collection, painting a portrait of an intensely tender poet alive with memories and journeys, who plays with language and imagery to build tiny worlds within each poem, so each resembles a room, an interior: a mother's eyebrows, a grandmother's garden, the wasp who stung a daughter, a snowy hill filled with laughter, a train skirting the Andes, mango skins floating down the river and the knife sharpener with his large wheel. An intensely enjoyable read that invites you in and offers you breakfast, rainwater and fresh-air." - Haley Jenkins, Selcouth Station Press