Empire of Dreams summary.
The Literary Encyclopedia: Empire of Dreams
Giannina Braschi’s Major Works: Cross-Genre Literature in Spanish, Spanglish, and English
Each of Giannina Braschi’s titles is part of one sweeping continuum—an epic series of highly stylized books within books that have shared characters, cross-genre structures, a chorus of anonymous voices speaking on behalf of the masses, a prophet or seer—and a namesake provocateur, Giannina, whose interjections and exclamations provide a humorous thread line. As Sergio Gutiérrez Negrón observes in World Literature Today, the contemporary reader is often “at odds to explain what is happening, how it is allowed to happen, and why—despite all this—it works so well” (Negrón 2021).
El imperio de los sueños (1988)
El imperio de los sueños (1988) [Empire of Dreams, 1994) is a collection of six books of poetry and fiction written in Spanish during the 1980s in New York City. The work is organized in three parts: Asalto al tiempo [Assault on Time] (1981), La comedia profana [Profane Comedy] (1985), and Diario íntimo de la soledad [Intimate Diary of Solitude] (1986). American poet Alicia Ostriker hailed Empire of Dreams a masterpiece, praising its relentless intensity and inventiveness. The work cross-dresses poetry in the garb of advertisement, love letter, TV commercial, diary, movie criticism, celebrity confession, literary theory, bastinado, and manifesto (Ostriker ix).
At its core, Empire of Dreams is a high-voltage love letter to New York City, written by a young immigrant electrified by the frenetic energy of her new home. In the midsection, “Pastoral; or the Inquisition of Memories” (1983), Braschi upends the Spanish Golden Age by unleashing a bucolic invasion of the Big Apple. Here, ancient elegies no longer mourn a lost Arcadia; instead, they mobilize a migrant revolution on Fifth Avenue. This radical reclamation—a “reverse colonization” where the marginalized seize the quintessential American skyline—reaches its apotheosis on the city’s iconic landmark:
On the top floor of the Empire State a shepherd has stood up to sing and dance. What a wonderful thing. That New York City has been invaded by so many shepherds. That work has stopped and there is only singing and dancing…. Shepherds have invaded New York. They have conquered New York. They have colonized New York…. Now there is only song. Now there is only dance. Now we do whatever we please. Whatever we please. Whatever we damn well please. (Empire of Dreams, p. 114)
Pastoral of the Inquisition of Memories
Braschi not only poeticizes the evolution of the Spanish language across historical ages, but also across shifting geographical terrains of the Spanish diaspora. Though the poems are set in New York, there are “allusions to the Quartier Latin, the barrios chinos of Barcelona and Seville, the Borgesian labyrinths of Buenos Aires, San Juan’s colonial architecture, and loci from literatures and societies of the past and present” (Carrión 447). Chilean novelist Carlos Labbé described Braschi’s language as “anti-Spanish colonized by the United States, from the imperial Castilian lexicon of Golden Age poetry that barely conceals the Mozarabic, the Berber, the Saharawi, and the Sephardic, from the Taíno syntax that defiantly survives in street-corner chatter” (Labbé, “Braschian Wave”).
By recasting New York as a theater of liberation for nomadic characters and writing (Loustau 21), Braschi dissolves the borders between the Golden Age and the digital era, effectively propelling the immigrant from the periphery to the vanguard of a new cultural empire (Cruz-Malavé 801).
[This Empire of Dreams summary is part of a longer essay on Giannina Braschi in the Literary Encyclopedia. Click to read the Giannina Braschi biography in The Literary Encyclopedia.]
Empire of Dreams reviews
El imperio de los sueños
“Empire of Dreams is a masterpiece, brilliantly translated. Braschi writes as an accomplished cosmopolitan heiress to the traditions of Lorca, Neruda, Mistral, and Márquez.”
Alicia Ostriker (Chancellor, Academy of American Poets)
“Braschi is a Spanish Arthur Rimbaud, reinventing surrealism, creating a maze of characters—clowns, shepherds, magicians, madmen, witches and artists who perform their fantasies in the city streets. In substantial ways, Braschi is the brightest new voice in her generation writing in the Spanish language. Empire of Dreams has been called a modern classic.”
Willis Barnstone and Tony Barnstone (Literatures of Asia, Africa, and Latin America: From Antiquity to Present)
“Good poets write great poems. Great poets create a new language. Giannina Braschi is a brilliant artist who has invented a syntax that reveals how we think, suffer, and take delight in the twenty-first century. Though the tone can be playful, her work has deep roots in the subversive side of classical literature. The scale is epic.”
Dennis Nurkse (Poet Laureate Brooklyn)
“The three parts of this collection—Assault on Time, Profane Comedy, and The Intimate Diary of Solitude—allude in different ways to the play of language, life as a grand theater, and the solitude of big cities…As with any empire, there are invasions, conquests, and colonization of territories in Empire of Dreams.”
Laura Loustau (Chapman University)
“This striking collection of brief, evocative prose pieces describes moments of experience and their contingencies…at times with humorous gusto. As translated by O’Dwyer, her rhythmic, energetic prose is challenging yet accessible.”
(Publishers Weekly)
“Braschi invites us into a world in which objects, places, and elements are animated, a world in which the profane comedy of literature is staged in an entirely new way. Empire of Dreams is an absolute joy-ride!”
Jean Franco (Columbia University)
“Revelation-ary! You get the feeling that every single word is touching the inside of your own senses. Connecting them to the world. For the first time. Revealing something you didn’t know you have always experienced. Enlarging the mind of the future.”
Ann Jäderlund (Swedish poet and playwright)
“A surge of deep emotion runs through anyone who listens to or reads Giannina Braschi because she writes the most compelling work – the dramatic, philosophical, humorous and always unpredictable in its experimental form. Braschi enlighten us with her passionate energy.”
Pia Tafdrup (Danish poet) on Empire of Dreams
“The Big Apple seems to be the central thematic axis. However, this is a bohemian space with allusions to the Quartier Latin, the barrios chinos of Barcelona and Seville, the Borgesian labyrinths of Buenos Aires, San Juan’s colonial architecture, and loci from literatures and societies of the past and present … In a pastiche of virtual reality, this rendition of New York is a poetic world invaded by parodies of bucolic voices from the Spanish literary past.”
María Mercedes Carrión (Emory University) [Click here to read Empire of Dreams summary and in-depth literary analysis, “M(other Tongues“.]
“Empire of Dreams is a modern classic, informed with all of the major concerns of our contemporary culture.”
Arnaldo Cruz-Malavé (Fordham University)
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