Puerto Rican diasporic writers.
Centro Journal, Vol. 34, Iss. 1, (Spring 2022): 265-268.
Center for Puerto Rican Studies
Carmen Haydée Rivera
BOOK REVIEW
Poets Philosophers Lovers: On the Writings of Giannina Braschi
“Giannina Braschi is one of the most multifaceted and innovative diasporic Puerto Rican writers of the past decades. Her literary works, published in English, Spanish, and Spanglish, and translated into various languages have revolutionized Puerto Rican Literature, both on and off the island. Born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Braschi’s creative and intellectual world extends far beyond geographic, linguistic, historical, and cultural boundaries to embrace another dimension of the tangible and the imagined in her efforts to form part of a literary tradition that she constantly renews and reinvents.
Braschi moved on to hybrid narrative experimentation, developed through the juxtaposition of genres (fiction, poetry, drama) and languages (Spanish and English) that defy and problematize narratological categorization in her work titled Yo-Yo Boing!, published by Latin American Literary Review in 1998. She later followed up with a publication full of multiple narrative voices and characters that traverse historical eras and literary movements in an attempt to unravel life’s significance within a transnational lens and postmodern perspective in United States of Banana (2011). In the same year of this publication, Amazon Crossing for World Literature also issued a collected works version of Braschi’s writing that included Empire of Dreams, Yo-Yo Boing! and United States of Banana. In 2021, a version of United States of…”
Click to PROQUEST for the full book review by Carmen Haydée Rivera Vega of Poets Philosophers Lovers: On the Writings of Giannina Braschi.
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Diasporic Puerto Rican Literature
Diasporic Literary Scholar
Carmen Haydée Rivera Vega is a professor in the Department of English, College of Humanities, at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras campus. She holds a Ph.D. in American Literature, with an emphasis on Multiethnic Literatures of the United States, from Northeastern University in Boston. Her teaching and research interests include Puerto Rican Diasporic Writers in the US, Contemporary US Latinx Literature, Literature of Caribbean Migration, and Women’s Studies. She has served as Interim Chair, ESL Coordinator, and Graduate Program Coordinator for the Department of English, College of Humanities; Dean of Academic Affairs in the Office of the Dean of Graduate Studies and Research; and Dean of Academic Affairs and Interim Chancellor for the UPR-Rio Piedras campus. Her publications include two co-edited collections of essays, Writing Off the Hyphen: New Perspectives on the Literature of the Puerto Rican Diaspora (University of Washington Press, 2008) and Cuba and Puerto Rico: Transdisciplinary Approaches to History, Literature, and Culture (University of Florida Press, 2023). She is also the author of a critical biography Border Crossings and Beyond: The Life and Works of Sandra Cisneros (Praeger Press, 2009) and a collection of interviews, Diasporic Journeys: Interviews with Puerto Rican Writers in the United States (CENTRO Press, 2023). Diasporic Journeys features interviews with Puerto Rican diasporic writers such as Giannina Braschi, Caridad de la Luz, Migdalia Cruz, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Quiara Alegría Hudes, and Raquel Salas Rivera, among others. Dr. Rivera Vega is currently working on an anthology of contemporary diasporic Puerto Rican writers on the theme of return migration to Puerto Rico.
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Puerto Rican Literature Resources
- The Puerto Rican Literature Project, University of Houston.
- CENTRO, The Center for Puerto Rican Studies, Hunter College, CUNY
Academic Resources on Puerto Rican Diasporic Writers
- Haydée Rivera, Carmen ed., Diasporic Journeys: Interviews with Puerto Rican Writers in the United States (Centro Press, 2023) https://gianninabraschi.com/puerto-rican-diaspora-writers/ (Giannina Braschi, Caridad de la Luz, Migdalia Cruz, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Quiara Alegría Hudes, Roque Salas Rivera, and others).
- Figueroa-Vásquez, Y. C. (2020). Decolonizing Diasporas: Radical Mappings of Afro-Atlantic Literature. Northwestern University Press. Access: OAPEN Library Open Access
- Hernández, Carmen Dolores. Puerto Rican Voices in English: Interviews with Writers. Praeger Publishers, 1997. (Jack Agüeros, Miguel Algarín, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Victor Hernández Cruz, Sandra María Esteves, Magali García Ramis, Nicholasa Mohr, Esmeralda Santiago, Piri Thomas, Edwin Torres, Abraham Rodríguez, Jr., and Ed Vega.)
- Nieves, Myrna. Anthology of Puerto Rican Women Writers in New York 1980-2012. (2012)
- Flores, J. The Diaspora Strikes Back: Caribeño Tales of Learning and Turning. Routledge. (2007) Access: Taylor & Francis
- Stanchich, Maritza. Insular Interventions: Diasporic Puerto Rican Literature Bilanguaging Toward a Greater Puerto Rico, Volume 1-2, 2003. (Giannina Braschi, Jesús Colón, Martín Espada, José Luis González, Tato Laviera, René Marqués, Luis Muñoz Marín, Luis Palés Matos, Pedro Pietri, Luis Rafael Sánchez, and Esmeralda Santiago)