Iconic Puerto Rican Poet.
Writing in Spanish, Spanglish, and English
“You’ve got something original there. You have it.”
— Jorge Luis Borges, on hearing the young Braschi recite her first poem
Giannina Braschi is a Puerto Rican poet, novelist, and philosopher whose revolutionary, multi-genre books have changed what literature can do. Visionary and innovative, she fuses poetry, fiction, theater, philosophy, musicals, and manifesto, dramatizing migration, empire, debt, and democracy with exuberant humor and unrelenting hope. She breaks the rules of genre, and of language itself, to imagine what freedom could look like.
“Cutting-edge, influential, and even revolutionary.”
— Library of Congress
“One of the most revolutionary voices in Latin America today.”
— PEN America
Epic Works
Empire of Dreams
1988. El imperio de los sueños. An epic in six books of poetry, written in Spanish in 1980s New York, where poetry cross-dresses as love letter, TV commercial, diary, novel, musical, and manifesto. Clowns, shepherds, magicians, madmen, witches, and artists unleash their fantasies in the streets, turning the city into a site of liberation for the multitudes. Alicia Ostriker, Chancellor Emerita of the Academy of American Poets, calls Empire of Dreams “a masterpiece,” and Braschi “an accomplished cosmopolitan heiress to the traditions of Lorca, Neruda, Mistral, and Márquez.”
Yo-Yo Boing!
1998. Yo-Yo Boing! Hailed as the first Spanglish novel, a book where dramatic voices switch between English and Spanish in mid-sentence and conversation becomes performance. Jean Franco praised Braschi’s “extraordinary virtuosity” and called Yo-Yo Boing! “a very funny novel, a novel of argumentative conversations that cover food, movies, literature, art, the academy, sex, memory, and everyday life. It is a book that should be performed as well as read.”
United States of Banana
PUTINOIKA
2024. An epic tragicomedy of pollution, collusion, and delusion in the Putin and Trump era. Carmen Boullosa calls it “the best thing that Trump ever gave us.”
“If, as in Ezra Pound’s translation of Aristotle, the ‘swift perception of relations’ is truly the ‘hallmark of genius,’ it’s in the brightly lit halls of Braschi’s books where poetry is tested and stamped with such a mark.”
— Forrest Gander, Pulitzer Prize–winning poet
Where to Begin
“Braschi is a literary genre in herself.”
— Elidio La Torre Lagares
New to Braschi? Start with Empire of Dreams, a love letter to New York, or United States of Banana, her first book in English.
Teaching or studying? Her books sit on syllabi beside Dante, Sophocles, Margaret Atwood, and Julia de Burgos. Start with the critical anthology Poets, Philosophers, Lovers: On the Writings of Giannina Braschi and the teaching guides on the Blog.
Writing about her? See Braschi’s biography, honors, and recent interviews, or get in touch through Contact.
Poets and artists: her work lives on as a graphic novel, art song cycles, theater, sculpture, film, and even a kinetic Giannina Chair that turns into a lamp. See Poetry on Film.
Thinking about law and liberty? United States of Banana asks readers “to rethink what we mean by freedom, what we regard as a right, and what we understand by sovereign power.”
Her Story
Before Giannina Braschi was a writer, she was a tennis champion, a teen model, and a founding member of the Children’s Choir of San Juan. She studied in Madrid, Florence, London, and Rouen, earned a Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and taught Cervantes, Garcilaso, Machado, and Lorca at Rutgers, Colgate, and the City University of New York. Then, in 1986, she walked away from criticism to forge, in her words, “a new language—a new way of looking at the world that has not yet been voiced or recognized.” An advocate for Puerto Rican independence, she writes to decolonize the mind, and she believes liberty is not an option but a human right.
Read Braschi’s biography.
Honors and Awards
Braschi’s honors span both sides of the Atlantic. The North American Academy of the Spanish Language granted her the Enrique Anderson Imbert National Award, citing a career “which extends from groundbreaking research on Hispanic classics to her spectacular work as a renowned and award-winning creator” and placing her “among the most innovative and influential voices of Hispanic letters in the United States.” In Spain, she received the Cambio16 Prize (Madrid) for a lifetime of creating a literature of hope, and the Fray Luis de León Medal for Ibero-American Poetry (Salamanca). The American Studies Association recognized Braschi with the Angela Y. Davis Award, and the City of San Juan honored her for her global impact on Puerto Rican culture. Her work has also been supported by fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, Ford Foundation, Rutgers University, and the Puerto Rican Institute for Culture.
“We don’t need storytellers. We need soothsayers. I never said I am a storyteller. I said I am a soothsayer. I say the sooth.”
— Giannina Braschi, PUTINOIKA
Content on this site is produced independently by its editorial team, not by Giannina Braschi.