PUTINOIKA is an epic tragicomedy by Giannina Braschi about frenzy and plague in the Trump and Putin era.
Inspired by Greeks tragedies, PUTINOIKA unfolds in three-parts: Palinode, Bacchae, and Putinoika. In a world flooding with collusion, delusion, and pollution, hope not only stands its ground in PUTINOIKA, but it elevates us to higher realms with exhilarating new literary forms, poetic expressions, and a renewed faith in creativity. PUTINOIKA insists that poets, philosophers, and lovers have the capacity to create on a scale greater than society’s capacity to destroy. If Waiting for Godot is a threnody of hope in the atomic age, PUTINOIKA is the joyous and humorous “Invictus” we didn’t know we were waiting for after the global pandemic.
Read about the Muses of Bacchus, the Agents of Pendejo, and the Putinas of Putin in PUTINOIKA.
“In Giannina Braschi’s churning imagination, in her exuberant, upwelling, hilarious and mortifying performances of wonderment, howl, synchronic time, ethical insistence, and linguistic swirl, it’s not unusual to find words such as ‘generosity’ and ‘spirit’ leading, in the same sentence, to ‘welfare,’ ‘radiation,’ and ‘tax deductions.’ 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. Like her character, Frenzy, she’s a provocateur who believes in and pledges her fidelity only to ‘everything that exists.’”
—Forrest Gander, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and author of Mojave Ghost
PUTINOIKA by Giannina Braschi
From the award-winning author of Yo-Yo Boing! and United States of Banana.
PRAISE FOR PUTINOIKA
“This powerful, funny, profound, wise, crazed book is a wild ride. It is a bomb (a poem?, a novel?, a play?, fiction? essay?, comedy?, drama? all of the above?). It is a meditation on poetry, art, the pandemia, politics, Trump, his wall, the Putinas, the author, Puerto Rico, Oedipus, and Baudelaire. I laughed to tears here and there while the book displays one of the cruelest portraits of our times. Bravo, Giannina!”
—Carmen Boullosa, award-winning poet, novelist, and playwright
“Putinoika defines quality as ‘experience condensed in a moment’. As such, this book is pure quality, an explosion of literary genre from the dithyrambic roots of Greek drama to current narrative. The sudden release of literary boundaries simultaneously exposes inevitable connections between fictional and real characters and affirms the bond between personal fulfillment and socio-political conditions. ‘There is a crack in everything’ thus, Oedipus predicament, Antigone’s choice, rites of Maenads, doubles of Trump, the recent pandemic, biblical fat and lean cows, all sing a handcuffed muses’ song and let light flow. Through brilliant and incessant juxtapositions Putinoika creates its own time. It takes place in the whenever, at whatever time mundane experiences, struggle, passion, and creativity demand that reason be imbued with feeling. The third and final part of the book, furthermore, perfectly situates the entire work in “the No of furies” and the Yes of their blessing. In short, Braschi’s book sublimely calls readers to experience themselves anew, this time, in full context.”
—Anne Ashbaugh, Chair, Philosophy, Towson University
“Braschi’s Putinoika, like Hegel’s Phenomenology, presents its readers with a gallery of voices in which the collective zeitgeist, dominated by the crumbling hegemony of the United States, may come to recollect the chaotic shapes of its barely figurable past. But unlike Hegelian spirit, the spirits that move through Braschi’s work conclude by inviting us to ‘confront the terror that happens in the void where nothing works’ in order to imagine a future other than the eternal return of the same. Readers familiar with her œuvre will find Putinoika quintessential Braschi: witty, irreverent, and astonishingly lucid.”
—Ronald Mendoza-de Jesús, Associate Professor, Comparative Literature, Emory University
“Braschi’s most audacious and electrifying creation yet! This thrilling ride spans from classical Greece to front page news, where the supernatural dances with the mundane, and the surreal becomes everyday reality. This isn’t just a read; it’s an experience—a whirlwind of recent history where anything can happen and often does. Eccentric, hilarious, and profound, Putinoika is the rara avis of modern literature—a true original that shatters conventions and leaves an indelible mark on your soul. As Tony Kushner gives us Angels in America marking the AIDS epidemic and Perestroika, Braschi gives us Putinas in America amidst the global pandemic with Putinoika. Her fearless storytelling sweeps you off your feet.”
—Nuria Morgado, Director, North American Academy of the Spanish Language and Correspondent, Royal Spanish Academy
“With Putinoika, Braschi makes a quantum leap which takes the novel from an unprecedented level of experimentation and into a new dimension. A polyphony of voices fizz, crackle, and cackle in a tour de force of philosophical poetry and poetical philosophy, offering a biting and hilarious denunciation of Trump’s America.”
—Madelena Gonzalez, Chair, Anglophone Literature, University of Avignon
“Sheer genius. From the tallest rooftops of Manhattan to the greenest pastorals in Empire of Dreams—and from Segismundo’s peekies under Lady Liberty’s skirt to the foulest scents coming out of the funerary processions of sardines in United States of Banana—Braschi’s penned worlds have irresistibly led us readers to great flats and depths. Her latest book, Putinoika, brings us home to another kind of empire of dreams, where debts of all kinds, sizes, and reaches run rampant alongside the magnificent deconstructor that is her poetic narrative mishmash. In impeccable comic mode, this new chapter of the history of empires ushers in the clash of a new round of bizarre titans. Bravo!”
—María M. Carrión, Professor, Comparative Literature and Religion, Emory University
“A feast of imagination, this modern-day Menippean satire blends Greek tragedy with contemporary U.S. politics, using humor and seriousness to explore the present and future of our contemporary world, doomed for destruction or re-creation.”
—Cristina Garrigós González, President, Spanish Association for American Studies
“While history tells things as they happened, Putinoika tells things as they should have happened. Braschi sees the chaos of our world and rearranges that chaos into an order governed by poetic justice. In doing so, Braschi heals the reader through the catharsis that Aristotle identified as the curative power of poetry. Putinoika is the best medicine for the fragmentation of the contemporary soul. A must read.”
—Manuel Broncano, Regents Professor of English, Texas A&M International
“Braschi teaches us all how the barriers between languages, nationalities, styles, and genres were meant to be torn down. Her ludic intellect and literary innovation have made her a beloved fixture of the global literary ecosystem, and Putinoika will only cement this status. We are honored to have featured the first published excerpt from the book in Latin American Literature Today, and to share in Braschi’s mission of breaking through the illusory boundaries that now, more than ever, seem determined to keep us apart.”
—Marcelo Rioseco, Editor-in-Chief, Latin American Literature Today
About Giannina Braschi
Giannina Braschi is an award-winning poet, novelist, and radical thinker who writes in Spanish, Spanglish, and English. Her earlier masterworks include the epic poem El imperio de los sueños/Empire of Dreams, the iconic Spanglish novel Yo-Yo Boing!, and the geopolitical tragicomedy United States of Banana. Braschi’s new book PUTINOIKA dramatizes frenzy and plague in the Trump and Putin era as an epic tragicomedy. The U.S. Library of Congress calls Braschi “cutting-edge, influential, and even revolutionary,” and PEN America recognizes her as “one of the most revolutionary voices in Latin America today.” Her texts have been widely adapted and applied to theatre, chamber music, graphic novels, painting, photography, artist books, short films, industrial design, and urban planning. Her life’s work is the subject of the anthology of essays, Poets Philosophers Lovers: On the Writings of Giannina Braschi, edited by Frederick Luis Aldama and Tess O’Dwyer. Braschi’s numerous accolades include honors from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, Danforth Foundation, Ford Foundation, Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, and PEN America. She has received lifetime achievement awards from the North American Academy of the Spanish Language, Cambio 16 in Spain, and her native city of San Juan, Puerto Rico. Terms frequently associated with Braschi include Postcolonial Literature, Latinx Philosophy, Postdramatic Theatre, Hysterical Realism, McOndo, and Post-Boom. She goes simply by poet.
For interview requests, please contact Lucas Jones, Publicist. Email: lucasjonespublicity@gmail.com or call 952-215-4807
Brown Ink, a new imprint of FlowerSong Press curated by Frederick Luis Aldama, is proud to release PUTINOIKA by Giannina Braschi in paperback and digital formats on September 14, 2024. Illustrations by Rosaura Rodríguez, Omar Banuch, and Roi du Lac.
tags: Putinoika, Putinas, Trump era, Putin era, Putinas of Putin.