Tributaries, the first book-length collection by Shawnee poet Laura Da’, begins with a scene of childbirth by Caesarean section. With an “abrasion that draws the past glistening into the present,” this commanding debut opens with a reflection on openings—the ruptures in our histories, geographies, and bodies that, following Da’s attentive gaze, demand we take a closer look. In poems that intertwine personal memoir, familial past, traditional Shawnee storytelling, and the history of Indian Removal, Da’ sifts through the painful records of Shawnee life under U.S. colonial power to remind us that archives, too, can come “glistening into the present.”
