LATINX SPACES features a review by Rolando Perez of the comic book version of United States of Banana.

“United States of Banana: A Graphic Novel is an artistic event, the result of a collaboration between Puerto Rican writer Giannina Braschi and Swedish cartoonist Joakim Lindengren. In effect, it is the graphic novel version of Braschi’s 2011 eponymous genre-bending book. In part prose poem, narrative, and play, United States of Banana is the performance of something completely new: a language of indistinctions and liberation from binarism that recalls Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil. “I was born after the distinctions were made, so I don’t distinguish between la chicha y la limonada, el merengue, y el coquí,” says the character of Giannina in United States of Banana (135). And thus, to that end, the graphic novel masterfully captures Giannina Braschi’s deconstructive ontology, epistemology, politics, and ethics.

Aldama (a.k.a. Professor Latinx), who has who has done more to advance Latinx superhero comics and Latinx graphic novels than anybody else—through his scholarly optics as well as through his Latinx Pop Lab at the UT-Austin. Masterful titles in the graphic novel genre-at-large include Angelitos: A Graphic Novel by Ilan Stavans (author) and Santiago Cohen (illustrator) (2018); The Trial: A Graphic Novel by Franz Kafka and Chantal Montellier (illustrator) and David Zane Mairowitz (adapter) (2008); Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel (2007); The Witch Owl Parliament (Clockwork Curandera) by David Bowles and Raúl the Third (authors) and Stacey Robinson and Damian Duffy (illustrators) (2021); and, Maus: A Survivor’s Tale by Art Spiegelman (1986).”