Giannina Braschi
Born	February 5, 1953 San Juan, Puerto Rico
Occupation	poet, novelist, essayist
Nationality	Puerto Rican, American
Period	1981-present
Notable work(s)	Yo-Yo Boing!; Empire of Dreams; United States of Banana
Notable award(s)	PEN/Open Book Award; National Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, Danforth and Ford Foundation fellowships
Influences Cervantes, Garcilaso, Vallejo, Gustavo Adolfo Becquer, Emily Dickinson, Juan Rulfo, Juan Ramon Jimenez, Garcia Lorca, Alfred Jarry, Antonin Artaud, Samuel Beckett, James Joyce, Heiner Müller, Gertrude Stein, Gabriela Mistral
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Giannina Braschi (b. San Juan, Puerto Rico, February 5, 1953) is a Puerto Rican writer. She is credited with writing the first Spanglish novel YO-YO BOING! (1998), the poetry trilogy Empire of Dreams (Yale, 1994), and the explosive new work of philosophical fiction United States of Banana, (AmazonCrossing, 2011), which chronicles the Latin American immigrant's experiences in the United States. "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."^[1] Her work has been described as a "synergetic fusion that marks in a determinant fashion the lived experiences of U. S. Hispanics." ^[2] Written in three languages, English, Spanglish, and Spanish, Braschi's work captures the cultural experience of nearly 50 million Hispanic Americans and also seeks to explore the three political options of Puerto Rico: Nation, Colony, or Statehood.

Literary influences[link]

In the 1970s, Giannina Braschi was a student of literature in Madrid, Rome, Paris, and London, before she settled in New York City. She obtained a PhD in Hispanic Literatures (State University of New York, Stony Brook, 1980) and has taught at Rutgers University, City University of New York, and Colgate University, where she served as a Distinguished Chair of Creative Writing (1997). She was a foreign correspondent for Grazie magazine (2001–2002).

As an adolescent in San Juan, Giannina Braschi ranked first place in the US Tennis Association's national tournament in Puerto Rico, becoming the youngest female tennis player to win the Women's Division (1966) on the island. Her father Euripides ("Pilo") Braschi was also a tennis champion. She was also a founding member of the San Juan Children's Choir ("Coro de niños de San Juan") under music director Evy Lucio and a fashion model during her teen years.

In the 1980s Braschi's early writings were scholarly in nature and focused on the titans of the Spanish Golden Age, as well as the vanguard poets of Latin America and Spain. She published a book on the Romantic poet Gustavo Adolfo Becquer and essays on Cervantes, Garcilaso, César Vallejo, Juan Ramon Jimenez, and Garcia Lorca. She later became obsessed with the dramatic and philosophical works of French, German, Polish, Irish, and Russian authors. Though categorized as novels, her later works are experimental in style and format, and celebratory of foreign influences. In the 50th anniversary edition of Evergreen Review, Braschi notes that she considers herself "more French than Beckett, Picasso, and Gertrude Stein" and believes that she is the "granddaughter of Alfred Jarry and Antonin Artaud, bastard child of Samuel Beckett and James Joyce, half-sister to Heiner Müller, kissing cousin of Tadeus Kantor, and lover of Witkiewicz".^[3]

Pivotal works[link]

In the 1980s, Giannina Braschi burst onto the downtown Nuyorican poetry scene with performances of rhythmic intensity, humorous gusto, and anti-imperialistic politics. Her prose poems were written, recited, and published entirely in Spanish during this period. Her first collection of Spanish prose poetry, Asalto al tiempo, debuted in Barcelona in 1980 and was followed by La Comedia profana in 1985 and El imperio de los sueños in 1988. New York is the site and subject of much of her work. In a climatic episode of "Pastoral or the Inquisition of Memories", shepherds invade 5th Avenue on 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.

Poet and feminist scholar Alicia Ostriker has praised Braschi's work, which features gender role-playing and transvestism, for having "sheer erotic energy that defies definition and dogma." ^[4] "Those three award winning books were published together as the inaugural volume of the Yale Library of Literature in Translation." (Braschi 1998: Yo-Yo Boing!: 13)

In the 1990s, Giannina Braschi began writing dramatic dialogues in English, Spanish, and Spanglish.^[5] Her bilingual experimental novel YO-YO BOING! (AmazonCrossing) is experimental in format and radical in its defiance of English-only laws, ethnic cleansing campaigns, and the corporate imposition of sameness.^[6]

In 2011 Giannina Braschi debuted "United States of Banana,” her first work written entirely in English; it is a post 9-11 dramatic novel about the powers of the world shifting. "United States of Banana,” takes as a springboard the collapse of the World Trade Center, the event which displaced her from the Battery Park neighborhood that became known as the Ground Zero vicinity. Braschi writes about the death of the businessman, the end of democracy, and the delusion that all men are created equal. “Revolutionary in subject and form, “United States of Banana” is a beautifully written declaration of personal independence,” declared the late publisher Barney Rosset former owner of Grove Press of "Evergreen Review.”

Translations[link]

In 2011 AmazonCrossing for World Literature in Translation released all of Braschi's works under three separate English titles: "Empire of Dreams," "Yo-Yo Boing!" and "United States of Banana". Excerpts of Braschi's work have appeared in Swedish, French, Italian, and Serbian translations. Her collected poetry was translated into English by Tess O'Dwyer, who won the Columbia University Translation Center Award in 1991 for her rendition of "Empire of Dreams", which inaugurated the Yale Library of World Literature in Translation in 1994. Literary journals that have published Tess O'Dwyer's translations include: The Best of Review: Art and Literature of the Americas, Agni, Ars Interpres, Dickinson Review, Callaloo, Artful Dodge, Evergreen Review, Prose Poem, and Poet Magazine. A number of critics have commented on Braschi's texts, including Jean Franco, David William Foster, Julia Carroll, Kristian Van Haesendonck, Francine Masiello, Ilan Stavans, Julio Ortega, Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes, Laura Loustau, Daniela Daniele, Arnaldo Cruz-Malavé, María Mercedes Carrión, Cristina Garrigos, Francisco José Ramos, Dennis Nurkse, and Doris Sommer.

Books[link]

• United States of Banana," AmazonCrossing, Seattle, 2011.
• Yo-Yo Boing," AmazonCrossing, Seattle, 2011.
• Empire of Dreams," AmazonCrossing, Seattle, 2011.
• El imperio de los sueños, Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras, 2000.
• Yo-Yo Boing!, Latin American Literary Review, Pittsburgh, 1998.
• Empire of Dreams (English translation by Tess O'Dwyer), Yale University Press, New Haven/London, 1994.
• El imperio de los sueños, Anthropos Editorial del hombre, Barcelona, 1988.
• Libro de payasos y bufones, Grafica Uno, Giorgio Upiglio, Milan, 1987.
• La comedia profana, Anthropos Editorial del hombre, Barcelona, 1985.
• Asalto al tiempo, Ambitos Literarios, Barcelona, 1980.

Scholarly works[link]

• Breve tratado del poeta artista', Cuadernos Hispanoaméricanos, No. 433-36, 1986.
• La gravedad de la armonía en ‘Soledades galerías y otros pomas’ de Machado, Plural, 1983.
• La poesía de Bécquer: El tiempo de los objetos o los espacios de la luz, Costa Amic, Mexico City, 1982.
• La Metamorfosis del ingenio en la Égloga III de Garcilaso, Revista canadiense de estudios hispánicos, 1979.
• Cinco personajes fugaces en el camino de Don Quijote, Cuadernos Hispanoaméricanos, No. 328, 1977.

Awards/honors[link]

• Danforth Scholarship
• El Diario La Prensa's Outstanding Women of 1998
• Ford Foundation Fellowship
• National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship
• New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship
• Peter S. Reed Foundation/InterAmericas
• PEN American Center's Open Book Award
• Instituto de Cultura Puertorriquena/grant

See also[link]

	Puerto Rico portal
	Biography portal
	Literature portal
	Poetry portal

• List of Latin American writers
• List of Famous Puerto Ricans
• Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States
• Corsican immigration to Puerto Rico
• Yoyo Boing
• Puerto Rican Day Parade
• Postmodern
• Pastoral
• Nuyorican Movement
• McOndo
• Spanglish
• List of Puerto Rican writers
• Puerto Rican literature

References[link]

External links[link]

• [3] New York 1 TV program PURA POLITICA, Juan Manuel Benitez, interview in Spanish Giannina Braschi on the political options of Puerto Rico, October 2011.
• [4], The Evergreen Review, featuring reviews of "United States of Banana" by Cristina Garrigos and Daniela Daniele and videos of Giannina Braschi, November 2011.
• [5], WAPA TV, "Escritora puertorriqueña que poco a poco se ha abierto paso en Estados Unidos" by Normando Valentín, December 2011.
• "Nuyorican Power," program on Nuyorican culture, featuring Giannina Braschi, Produced By: Evan B. Stone & Carrie Pyle for CURRENT TV.
• [6], television program in Spanish, "Celebrities desde Nueva York," con Alfonso Diaz, featuring Giannina Braschi (on the collapse of the American Empire on September 11), November 2011.
• [7] "Howdy Amiga Bienvenida," audio file of Giannina Braschi reading poems in Stockholm, Ars Interpress, 2006.
• "Ground Zero," by Giannina Braschi, featured in Evergreen Review, edited by Barney Rosset.
• "El futuro del idioma Español", Oppenheimer Presenta #276, on Youtube(featuring Director of La Real Academia Espanola Victor, Garcia de la Concha, and author Giannina Braschi).
• http://www.evergreenreview.com/112/a_la_vieille/a_la_vieille_1.html