Spanning nearly two centuries, the Puerto Rican novel is a vibrant tradition shaped across languages, genres, generations, and geographies. From the archipelago to the diaspora—and from Spanish to English and Spanglish—Puerto Rican writers have turned plantations, drawing rooms, barrios, city streets, airplanes, and colonial institutions into settings for resistance, reinvention, and cultural...
This blogpost features a summary of the postcolonial novel United States of Banana excerpted from The Literary Encyclopedia. United States of Banana, Braschi’s first work written in English, rewrites “radical politics as high art” by dramatizing the collapse of the Twin Towers as a metaphor for the fall of the American empire (Gonzalez 23). Described by Library Journal as “bizarre but intriguing”...
Professor and coeditor Amy Sheeran discusses teaching United States of Banana: A Graphic Novel as an interdisciplinary work connecting Puerto Rican history, U.S. imperialism, Latinx comics, literature, visual art, and popular culture. With classroom approaches and newer scholarship from Thomas Rothe and NYU’s Latinx Project, this guide shows how Giannina Braschi and Joakim Lindengren’s political...
Resources for Puerto Rican Comic Books.
Arizona Journal of Hispanic Studies published this book review by Nuria Morgado of United States of Banana by Giannina Braschi and Joakim Lindengren.
MASTERFULLY ILLUSTRATED.
MASTERFULLY WRITTEN.
This blogpost also includes Scholarly Resources for Puerto Rican comic book studies.
United States of Banana: A Graphic Novel connects Puerto Rican history, American politics, literature, philosophy, art, and popular culture. Coeditors Amy Sheeran and Amanda M. Smith bring complementary perspectives in teaching and Latin American literary scholarship to an edition that invites students to discover connections among colonialism, visual culture, adaptation, and political thought...