Poets, Philosophers, Lovers: On the Writings of Giannina Braschi

by Frederick Luis Aldama (Editor), Tess O'Dwyer (Editor)

Overview

With a foreword by Ilan Stavans

This collection of essays, by fifteen scholars across diverse fields, explores forty years of writing by Giannina Braschi, one of the most revolutionary Latinx authors of her generation. Since the 1980s, Braschi’s linguistic and structural ingenuities, radical thinking, and poetic hilarity have spanned the genres of theatre, poetry, fiction, essay, musical, manifesto, political philosophy, and spoken word. Her best-known titles are El imperio de los sueños, Yo-Yo Boing!, and United States of Banana. She writes in Spanish, Spanglish, and English and embraces timely and enduring subjects: love, liberty, creativity, environment, economy, censorship, borders, immigration, debt, incarceration, colonialization, terrorism, and revolution. Her work has been widely adapted into theater, photography, film, lithography, painting, sculpture, comics, and music. The essays in this volume explore the marvelous ways that Braschi’s texts shake upside down our ideas of ourselves and enrich our understanding of how powerful narratives can wake us to our higher expectations.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780822987598
Publisher:	University of Pittsburgh Press
Publication date:	10/27/2020
Series:	Latinx and Latin American Profiles
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	208
File size:	533 KB

About the Author

Frederick Luis Aldama (Editor)
Frederick Luis Aldama, aka Professor Latinx, is the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities and founder and director of the Latinx Pop Lab at the University of Texas, as well as adjunct Distinguished University Professor at The Ohio State University. He is an award-winning author of dozens of books as well as editor of nine academic press book series. His fiction includes the children’s books The Adventures of Chupacabra Charlie and Con Papá/With Papá.

Tess O'Dwyer (Editor)
Tess O’Dwyer won the Columbia University Translation Center Award for her rendition of Giannina Braschi’s postmodern poetry epic Empire of Dreams and translated Braschi’s Spanglish classic Yo-Yo Boing! as well as Martin Rivas by Alberto Blest Gana. She is the Chairman of the Board of the Academy of American Poets.

Table of Contents

Contents Acknowledgments Foreword by Ilan Stavans Introduction | Frederick Luis Aldama I: Vanguard Forms and Latinx Sensibilities Chapter 1: The Uncommon Wealth of Art: Poetic Progress as Resistance to the Commodification of Culture in United States of Banana | Madelena Gonzalez Chapter 2: Rompiendo esquemas: Catastrophic Bravery in United States of Banana | John “Rio” Riofrio Chapter 3: Exile and Burial of Ontological Sameness: A Dialogue between Zarathustra and Giannina | Anne Ashbaugh Chapter 4: Yo-Yo Boing! Or Literature as a Translingual Practice | Francisco Moreno-Fernández Chapter 5: Bilingual Big Bang: Giannina Braschi’s Trilogy Levels the Spanish-English Playing Field | Maritza Stanchich II: Persuasive Art of Dramatic Voices Chapter 6: Giannina and Braschi: A Polyphony of Voices | Cristina Garrigós Chapter 7: The Poetry of Giannina Braschi: Art and Magic in Assault on Time | Laura R. Loustau Chapter 8: The Human Barnyard: Rhetoric, Identification, and Symbolic Representation in United States of Banana | Elizabeth Lowry Chapter 9: Gamifying World Literature: Giannina Braschi’s United States of Banana | Daniela Daniele III: Intermedial Poetics and Radical Thinking Chapter 10: Leaping Off the Page: Giannina Braschi’s Intermedialities | Dorian Lugo Bertrán Chapter 11: Free-dom: United States of Banana and the Limits of Sovereignty | Ronald Mendoza-de Jesús Chapter 12: The Holy Trinity: Money, Power, and Success in United States of Banana | Francisco José Ramos Chapter 13: My Dinner with Giannina: Rolando Pérez Interviews Giannina Braschi Contributors Index

Editorial Reviews

A new collection of essays by well-known scholars helps foster a deeper understanding of the innovation and relevance of [Braschi's] work.

Hispanic New York

At long last! Aldama and O’Dwyer have brought together a lineup of talent to match the vivacious audacity of Giannina Braschi. Admirers of Braschi will feast on every sumptuous page of this book, and they'll return to her lush storyworlds with renewed vigor. Poets, Philosophers, Lovers reveals the challenging necessity of this transformative Latinx author.

Christopher González

One of the most comprehensive and critically engaging publications that covers the breadth and scope of Braschi’s literary production. . . . Perfectly aligns with Braschi’s literary proposals and aesthetics by providing a variety of critical voices and commentary on her work that help contextualize and further comprehend the important legacy of Braschi’s incomparable genius and craft.

Centro Journal

Los quinceensayos de este libro, escritos por otros tantos estudiosos de la literatura, conforman una reflexiónerudita sobre su obra. Son también un raro homenaje a una escritora puertorriqueña que ha superado losencasillamientos usuales con que se suele silenciar la voz de los nuestros.

Nuevo Dia

This is a welcome and well-conceived volume on the extraordinary work of Giannina Braschi, a Puerto Rican writer and consummate New Yorker whose creative decolonizing of aesthetics and culture deserves sustained critical engagement. . . . It is a testimony to the editors and contributors of Poets, Philosophers, Lovers that they are able to convey the energy, wit, and aesthetic nuance of Braschi’s timely interventions.

American Book Review

The recent volume Poets, Philosophers, Lovers: On the Writings of Giannina Braschi, edited by Frederick Luis Aldama and Tess O’Dwyer, has come to fill a major gap in the critical bibliography on Braschi’s work and life. . . . [It] is a comprehensive collection on the work that Giannina Braschi has been developing since the 1980s and, with rigorous and accessible texts, represents an essential resource for future Braschian studies, as well as diaspora literature in general.

Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies

The fifteen essays in this book, written by as many scholars of literature, make up a scholarly collection on the work. They are also a rare tribute to a Puerto Rican writer who has overcome the usual pigeonholing with which the voice of our people is usually silenced.

Cambio16

The book’s main thrust is to reintroduce Braschi to a wider academic public and reframe her, through the critical lens of the day, as ‘one of today’s foremost experimental Latinx authors.’ For Aldama and the book’s contributors, Braschi participates in a long, albeit less visible, branch of Latinx writing that has been and continues to be driven by aesthetic and literary experimentation rather than explicit realist representation.

World Literature Today

"At long last! Aldama and O’Dwyer have brought together a lineup of talent to match the vivacious audacity of Giannina Braschi. Admirers of Braschi will feast on every sumptuous page of this book, and they'll return to her lush storyworlds with renewed vigor. Poets, Philosophers, Lovers reveals the challenging necessity of this transformative Latinx author." —Christopher González, Utah State University, author of Permissible Narratives: The Promise of Latino/a Literature
 

“The book’s main thrust is to reintroduce Braschi to a wider academic public and reframe her, through the critical lens of the day, as ‘one of today’s foremost experimental Latinx authors.’ For Aldama and the book’s contributors, Braschi participates in a long, albeit less visible, branch of Latinx writing that has been and continues to be driven by aesthetic and literary experimentation rather than explicit realist representation.” —World Literature Today

“A new collection of essays by well-known scholars helps foster a deeper understanding of the innovation and relevance of [Braschi’s] work.” —Hispanic New York

“The fifteen essays in this book, written by as many scholars of literature, make up a scholarly collection on the work. They are also a rare tribute to a Puerto Rican writer who has overcome the usual pigeonholing with which the voice of our people is usually silenced.” —Cambio16

“The recent volume Poets, Philosophers, Lovers: On the Writings of Giannina Braschi, edited by Frederick Luis Aldama and Tess O’Dwyer, has come to fill a major gap in the critical bibliography on Braschi’s work and life. . . . [It] is a comprehensive collection on the work that Giannina Braschi has been developing since the 1980s and, with rigorous and accessible texts, represents an essential resource for future Braschian studies, as well as diaspora literature in general.” —Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies

One of the most comprehensive and critically engaging publications that covers the breadth and scope of Braschi’s literary production. . . . Perfectly aligns with Braschi’s literary proposals and aesthetics by providing a variety of critical voices and commentary on her work that help contextualize and further comprehend the important legacy of Braschi’s incomparable genius and craft.” —Centro Journal

“This is a welcome and well-conceived volume on the extraordinary work of Giannina Braschi, a Puerto Rican writer and consummate New Yorker whose creative decolonizing of aesthetics and culture deserves sustained critical engagement. . . . It is a testimony to the editors and contributors of Poets, Philosophers, Lovers that they are able to convey the energy, wit, and aesthetic nuance of Braschi’s timely interventions.” —American Book Review

“Los quinceensayos de este libro, escritos por otros tantos estudiosos de la literatura, conforman una reflexiónerudita sobre su obra. Son también un raro homenaje a una escritora puertorriqueña que ha superado losencasillamientos usuales con que se suele silenciar la voz de los nuestros.” —Nuevo Dia

From the Publisher