Giannina Braschi – författare

Giannina Braschi explores the cultural and political journey of nearly 50 million Hispanic Americans living in the United States in this explosive new work of fiction, her first written in originally in English. United States of Banana takes place at the Statue of Liberty in post-9/11 New York City, where Hamlet, Zarathustra, and Giannina are on a quest to free the Puerto Rican prisoner Segismundo. Segismundo has been imprisoned for more than one hundred years, hidden away by his father, the king of the United States of Banana, for the crime of having been born. But when the king remarries, he frees his son, and for the sake of reconciliation, makes Puerto Rico the fifty-first state and grants American passports to all Latin American citizens. This staggering show of benevolence rocks the global community, causing an unexpected power shift with far-reaching implications. In a world struggling to realign itself in favor of liberty, United States of Banana is a force to be reckoned with in literature, art, and politics.

An intriguing and hypnotizing work of postmodern fiction from groundbreaking Hispanic-American writer Giannina Braschi, Empire of Dreams chronicles a decade-long love affair with 1980s New York and all its contradictions. The city’s perversions and passions, power and marginality, grandeur and squalor come vibrantly to life in each of the book’s three sections. “Book of Clowns and Buffoons” imagines life in the city as a carnival-style spectacle that ultimately ends in chaos. Inspired by the Puerto Rican Day parade, a bucolic celebration reclaims the city in “Pastoral.” And “The Intimate Diary of Solitude” spoofs the magical realism of Latin American novelists such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez with its tale of aspiring actress-writer Mariquita Samper, who records the days of her increasingly outlandish life in a mystical diary. Wildly imaginative, rich and complex, Empire of Dreams has garnered glowing praise for being “an ‘in-your-face assertion’ of the vitality of Latino culture in the US” (New York Daily News).

This groundbreaking novel, set in New York City during the 1990s, is guaranteed to be unlike any literary experience you have ever had. Acclaimed Puerto Rican author Giannina Braschi has crafted this creative and insightful examination of the Hispanic-American experience, taking on the voices of a variety of characters–painters, poets, sculptors, singers, writers, filmmakers, actors, directors, set designers, editors, and philosophers–to draw on their various cultural, economic, and geopolitical backgrounds to engage in lively cultural dialogue. Their topics include love, sex, food, music, books, inspiration, despair, infidelity, jobs, debt, war, and world news. Braschi’s discourse winds throughout the city’s public, corporate, and domestic settings, offering an inside look at the cultural conflicts that can occur when Anglo Americans and Latin Americans live, work, and play together. Hailed by Publishers Weekly as “a literary liberation,” this energetic and comical novel celebrates the contradiction that makes contemporary American culture so wonderfully diverse.

First published in Spanglish in 1998 to rave reviews, this is the first English publication of Yo-Yo Boing!