The Death of My Father the Pope: A Memoir

A man mourning his alcoholic father faces a choice: whether to pay tribute, lay scorn upon him, or pour a drink. A wrenching, dazzling, revelatory debut.

Weaving between preparations for his father’s funeral and memories of life on both sides of the U.S.–Mexico border, Obed Silva chronicles his father’s alcoholism—a lifelong love that ended only at his death at the age of forty-eight, having poisoned himself one Carta Blanca at a time. Addiction respects no borders; the havoc Silva’s father wreaked on his family not only followed them north, where mother and son moved to escape his violent drunken rages, but would make itself felt even from the grave.




With a wry cynicism; a profane, profound anger; an antic, brutally honest voice; and a hard-won classical frame of reference, Silva channels the heartbreak of mourning while wrestling with the resentment and frustration resulting from addiction. The Death of My Father the Pope is a fluid and dynamic combination of memoir and examination of the power of language—and the introduction of a unique and powerful literary voice.