InHERent

"Inherent by Lucía 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, Poet and NYU Clinical Professor

"Lucía 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