Latinx Philosophy | Latinx Theater
PUTINOIKA, a Modern Bacchae
PUTINOIKA—a multi-genre epic explores the frenzy and plague in the era of Putin and Trump. Drawing inspiration from ancient Greek tragedies, PUTINOIKA unfolds as a tragicomedy in three parts: Palinode, Bacchae, and Putinoika. Amid a world overflowing with collusion, delusion, and pollution, hope not only stands resilient but also ascends to higher realms through exhilarating new literary forms, poetic expressions, and a renewed faith in creativity.
Forrest Gander, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and author of Mojave Ghost, lauds the work, stating, “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.”
“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, Comparative Literature, Emory University
About Giannina Braschi
Giannina Braschi is the award-winning author of Empire of Dreams, Yo-Yo Boing!, and United States of Banana. Her new book Putinoika is an epic tragicomedy, based on the Bacchae, about frenzy and plague in the Trump and Putin era. The United States Library of Congress describes her life’s work as “cutting-edge, influential and even revolutionary.” Her subjects range from love, liberty, inspiration, and creativity to economy, immigration, incarceration, decolonization, and revolution.
Born in San Juan and based in Manhattan, Braschi writes cross-genre works that are structural hybrids of poetry, fiction, essay, theater, manifesto, and political philosophy.
With a PhD in Hispanic Literatures from the State University of New York, Stony Brook, Braschi taught at Rutgers University, Colgate University, and City University of New York.
This Latinx poet has received awards and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Danforth Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Puerto Rican Institute for Culture, Rutgers University, PEN America, Cambio 16 in Madrid, and the North American Academy of the Spanish Language (ANLE). Her scholarly publications include a book on the Spanish Romantic poet Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer and essays on Miguel de Cervantes, Garcilaso de la Vega, Antonio Machado, and Federico García Lorca.
Her life’s work experimental literature and Latinx philosophy is the subject of “Poets, Philosophers, Lovers: On the Writings of Giannina Braschi”, edited by Frederick Luis Aldama and Tess O’Dwyer. Library Journal recommends her work for “fans of philosophical fiction such as Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra”.
Called “one of the most innovative writers of our time” by El Centro, Braschi has influenced a new generation of artists, writers, and makers. Her texts have been widely adapted to other art forms, spanning comics/graphic novel, chamber music, theater play, painting, sculpture, urban planning, and industrial design.
“Braschi is recognized as one of today’s foremost experimental Latinx authors.“
Frederick Luis Aldama
Poets, Philosophers, Lovers: On the Writings of Giannina Braschi
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