Stavans blurbs Putinoika
Ilan Stavans blurbs Giannina Braschi’s new book PUTINOIKA in the style of his philosophical and literary heroes–Shakespeare, Diogenes of Sinope, Johan Gottfried Herder, Erasmus of Rotterdam, Juan Luis Vives, and Sor Juana. Illustrations of Ilan as his heroes by Oscar Garza.
Who is Ilan Stavans?
- Publisher of Restless Books: restlessbooks@com
- Consultant to Oxford English Dictionary
- NEPR Podcast: “In Contrast with Ilan Stavans”Co-Founder and Academic Director: Great Books Summer Camp
- Award-winning feature film: My Mexican Shiva (password: shivahenglish)
- Award-winning animated short: The Silence of Professor Tosla
- TED-Animation: A Brief History of Spanish
- TED-Animation: Fernando Pessoa
- TED-Animation: The Mayan Twins
- TED-Animation: Who Decides What’s in the Dictionary?
- TED-Animation: Why Should You Read Don Quixote?
- TED-Animation: The Magical Fictions of Jorge Luis Borges
- TED-Animation: The Poetry of Pablo Neruda
What is Putinoika?
PUTINOIKA is a multi-genre literary epic about frenzy and plague in the Putin and Trump era. Inspired by the ancient Greek 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 also 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 “Invictus” we were waiting for after the global pandemic.
Miguel-Angel Zapata reviews PUTiNOIKA: “Its light comes from an apparent chaos, a mirror of our time, written in a precise, profane, and sweetly convulsive language.” Latino Book Review
“Give me more Putinas, por favor: A Conversation with Giannina Braschi.” Sandra Guzmán interviews Giannina Braschi in World Literature Today
Who else blurbs 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
“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
Date: September 25, 2024 Publisher: Brown Ink, a new imprint of FlowerSong Press curated by Frederick Luis Aldama Illustrators: Rosaura Rodríguez and Omar Banuchi of Días Cómic; Roi du Lac Formats: Paperback + digital Price: $21.00 Order: FlowerSong Press, Amazon, or any online bookseller