This blogpost features a summary of the postcolonial novel United States of Banana excerpted from The Literary Encyclopedia. United States of Banana, Braschi’s first work written in English, rewrites “radical politics as high art” by dramatizing the collapse of the Twin Towers as a metaphor for the fall of the American empire (Gonzalez 23). Described by Library Journal as “bizarre but intriguing”...
The Literary Encyclopedia: Giannina Braschi Biography Giannina Braschi is a leading force of innovation in American and Latin American literature and political philosophy of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. Braschi writes mixed-genre epic works in Spanish, Spanglish, and English about the marvels and travesties of the human flow—of mass migration, mass incarceration, democracy...
Rethinking the Latin American Canon. Based on an excerpt from The Literary Encyclopedia.... Giannina Braschi functions as a quintessential academic disruptor whose "notoriously unclassifiable" work mandates a rigorous rethinking of contemporary literary boundaries. Rejecting the passivity of conventional storytelling for a "new literary architecture" rooted in geometry and prophetic imagination...
Enjoy books by Puerto Rican poets today ranging from Willie Perdomo, Giannina Braschi, Edwin Torres, and Elisabet Velásquez in New York City to Mayra Santos, Roque Sala, Xavier Valcárcel on the island. Many more talented poets...
Drawing from Carmen Haydée Rivera’s interview collection Diasporic Journeys: Interviews with Puerto Rican Writers in the United States, this post highlights the pivotal role of Nuyorican women playwrights in establishing a distinct, multi-genre theatrical tradition defined by migration, identity, and complex returns "home." It profiles key figures—including Giannina Braschi, Migdalia Cruz, Quiara...
This guide traces American epic poetry from Walt Whitman, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, T. S. Eliot, H.D., Ezra Pound, and Charles Olson to contemporary epics by Giannina Braschi, Derek Walcott, Gary Snyder, Alice Notley, Nathaniel Mackey, Anne Waldman, Tyehimba Jess, and Tommy Pico. Through chronological and alphabetical lists, literary excerpts, a short film, and research resources, it shows how...
Carolyn Kuebler reviews Empire of Dreams for The Review of Contemporary Fiction. Giannina Braschi has earned her preferred label of modern writer. Latin American, Puerto Rican, New Yorker, and feminist are apt labels as well, but though they might be selling points, they do little to describe her writing. Braschi writes with a strong poetic tradition behind her, and from her erudite standpoint...
Nuyorican poets didn’t simply enter American literature—they broke open its language, claimed its stages, and built their own institutions when the establishment shut them out. Moving through English, Spanish, Spanglish, performance, humor, and political resistance, they made poetry multilingual, embodied, and public. From Algarín’s street-rooted poetics, Pietri’s incendiary performances, and...
Flowersong's Essential Voices Newsletter Special Edition discusses how PUTINOIKA is gaining scholarly traction as Giannina Braschi enters The Literary Encyclopedia as a new addition to the literary canon. Flowersong is proud to consider Giannina Braschi a "Hall-of-Famer alongside MacArthur award winner Juan Felipe Herrera and Fuller Award winner Luis Alberto Urrea. Together, they are not just...
Boston College Libraries recommends Boom and Post-Boom novels by Julio Cortázar, Mario Vargas Llosa, José Donoso, Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel García Márquez, Isabel Allende, Roberto Bolaño, Cristina Peri Rossi, Elena Poniatowska, Severo Sarduy, Manuel Puig, Luisa Valenzuela, and Giannina Braschi.