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

Latinx and Latin American Profiles

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

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 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.

168 pages, Hardcover

Published October 27, 2020

Reviews

[Transnational · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant collection of essay on Latinx author Giannina Braschi, situating her work in various fields from Postmodernism and Postcolonialism to American poetry and Latin American fiction. Great for teachers and students of Latino literature in the United States.

[APP · Rating 5 out of 5]

Latinx philosophy and poetry is an exciting and ever expanding field. I highly recommend this book as a path to better understand one of the most complex and invigorating bodies of vanguard writing in the United States. It offers a dozen or more essays by experts in various fields to talk about the work and the world of ours in which it was written. It pay homage as one critic said to the legacy of the "incomparable genius and craft" of Braschi.