Blog

Puerto Rican poetry

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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...

Nuyorican Women Playwrights

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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...

American epic poems

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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...

Empire of Dreams Review

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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...

12 Essential Nuyorican Poets and Their Best-Known Works

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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...

Addition to the literary canon

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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...

Post-Boom Novels

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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.

Contemporary Bacchae

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List of contemporary Bacchae theater productions in festivals since 2000, plus a spotlight on three adaptions include Bakkhai by Anne Carson, PUTINOIKA by Giannina Braschi, and The Bacchae by Katherine Soper.

Plus, a list of recently published academic resources that shed new light on The Bacchae.

Puerto Rican philosophers and Cultural Theorists

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This guide introduces major Puerto Rican philosophers and cultural theorists through the ideas that define their work: education and ethics, national identity, aesthetics, colonialism, debt, sovereignty, memory, diaspora, and popular culture. From Eugenio María de Hostos and Francisco José Ramos to Anayra Santory Jorge, Rocío Zambrana, Giannina Braschi, Arcadio Díaz-Quiñones, Juan Flores, and...

Poet Athletes: Fun facts, Quirky Tidbits, and Sports Poems

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This quirky and engaging literary feature explores the surprising intersection of sports and poetry, profiling seven American writers—Jack Kerouac, James Dickey, Ken Kesey, Giannina Braschi, Terrance Hayes, Natalie Diaz, and Hanif Abdurraqib—who competed in varsity or professional sports before making their mark on the page. Highlighted by fun facts, a rare historical photograph of Giannina...