Giannina Braschi


Giannina Braschi is a Puerto Rican writer based in New York City. Her notable works include Empire of Dreams, Yo-Yo Boing! and United States of Banana.
Braschi writes cross-genre works in Spanish, Spanglish, and English. Her story-telling incorporates elements of poetry, novel, musical theatre, metafiction, manifesto, and political philosophy. Her work explores the enculturation journey of Hispanic immigrants, and dramatizes the three main political options of Puerto Rico: independence, colony, and state.

Early life in Puerto Rico

Giannina Braschi was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico to an upper class family of Italian ancestry. She was a student of Sacred Heart. In 1966, she ranked first place in the US Tennis Association's national tournament and became the youngest female tennis champion in Puerto Rico. Her father Euripides Braschi was also a tennis champion. She was a founding member of the San Juan Children's Choir and a fashion model during her teen years. In the late 1970s, she studied literature and philosophy in Madrid, Rome, Rouen and London, before she settled in New York City.

Academic career

With a PhD in Hispanic Literatures from State University of New York, Stony Brook, Braschi was a professor at Rutgers University, City University of New York, and Colgate University. Her research won grants and awards from Ford Foundation, Danforth Scholarship, and Rutgers University. She published a book on the Spanish Romantic poet Gustavo Adolfo Becquer and essays on Cervantes, Garcilaso, César Vallejo, Juan Ramon Jimenez and Federico García Lorca.

Literary career

Braschi’s work is situated in the Latinx avant-garde, a "burgeoning body of work that testifies to Latinx writers’ abiding interest in the avant-garde as a means for engaging ideas of material, social relevance". Braschi is considered a "revolutionary voice"in contemporary Latin American literature".

Spanish

In the 1980s, Braschi wrote dramatic poetry in Spanish prose in New York City. Her postmodern poetry titles were published in Barcelona, Spain, including: Asalto al tiempo, La Comedia profana, and El Imperio de los sueños. She lived in New York City and was part of the Nuyorican movement. "The Big Apple" is the site and subject of much of her poetry. In a climactic episode of Braschi's Empire of Dreams, "Pastoral or the Inquisition of Memories", shepherds invade 5th Avenue during the Puerto Rican Day Parade and take over the City of New York; the shepherds ring the bells of St. Patrick's Cathedral, and seize the observation deck of the Empire State Building. Immigrant characters play the role of other characters, swapping names, genders, personal histories, and identities. Alicia Ostriker situates her gender-bending and genre-blending poetry as having a "sheer erotic energy that defies definition and dogma."

Spanglish

In the 1990s, Braschi wrote and performed dramatic dialogues in Spanglish. Her code-switching Spanglish novel Yo-Yo Boing! explores "the lived experiences of urban life for Hispanics, as in the case with New York City, and her principal interest is in representing how individuals move in and out of different cultural coordinates, including one so crucial as language." The book was written in an era of renewed calls for English-only laws, ethnic cleansing campaigns, and corporate censorship. "For decades, Dominican and Puerto Rican authors have carried out a linguistic revolution", noted The Boston Globe, "and Giannina Braschi, especially in her novel Yo-Yo Boing!'', testify to it".

English

Braschi published the geopolitic comic-tragedy United States of Banana, her first book written entirely in English, in 2011. It is a postmodern work using different genres and techniques to explore cultural and political shifts in the United States and the world after the attacks of 9/11. The work is a critique of 21st-century capitalism, corporate censorship, and the global war on terror. Braschi spoke on a panel on "The New Censorship" at the PEN 2012 World Voices Festival where she offered "a critique of 21st century capitalism in which condemned corporate censorship and control."
Her work is celebratory of foreign influences. Braschi stated in Evergreen Review that she considered herself "more French than Beckett, Picasso and Gertrude Stein", and identifies as the "granddaughter of Alfred Jarry and Antonin Artaud, bastard child of Samuel Beckett and James Joyce, half-sister to Heiner Müller, kissing cousin of Tadeusz Kantor, and lover of Witkiewicz".

Adaptions and translations

Braschi's texts have been adapted into other art forms, including video and photography by Michael Somoroff, painting and sculpture by Michael Zansky, theater play by Juan Pablo Felix, and graphic novel by Joakim Lindengren. Her books have been translated into English by Tess O'Dwyer, into Spanish by Manuel Broncano, and into Swedish by Helena Eriksson and Hannah Nordenhok.

Political activism

Braschi is an advocate for Puerto Rican independence. She declared the independence of Puerto Rico in United States of Banana and stated in the press that "Liberty is not an option — it is a human right." In the 1990s, she protested the United States Navy's bombing exercises in Vieques, along with politicians Rubén Berríos and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., singers Danny Rivera and Willie Colón, and fellow writers Ana Lydia Vega and Rigoberta Menchú. In July 2019, Braschi led early marches outside La Fortaleza in Old San Juan to demand the resignation of Puerto Rican Governor Ricardo Rossello, and joined massive protests, with singers Bad Bunny, Residente, and Ricky Martin, that led to the Governor's resignation.

Books