Giannina Braschi

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Giannina Braschi

Born February 5, 1953
San Juan, Puerto Rico
Occupation poet, novelist, essayist
Nationality Puerto Rican, American
Writing period 1981-present
Notable work(s) YO-YO BOING!; Empire of Dreams
Notable award(s) PEN American/Open Book Award; NEA and Ford Foundation fellowships

Poet and novelist Giannina Braschi (b. San Juan, Puerto Rico, February 5, 1953) is credited with writing the first Spanglish novel YO-YO BOING! (1998) and the poetry trilogy Empire of Dreams (Yale, 1994), 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 is a "synergetic fusion that marks in a determinant fashion the lived experiences of U. S. Hispanics." [2]

Contents

[edit] Literary Influences

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, 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.

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, 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]

[edit] Pivotal Works

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. Her collected works appeared under the title El imperio de los sueños in 1988. In a climatic episode ("Pastoral or the Inquisition of Memories"), shepherds invade 5th Avenue on the Puerto Rican Day Parade and take over the City of New York. Poet and feminist scholar Alicia Ostriker wrote in the introduction to the English translation of Empire of Dreams that Braschi's work, which features gender role-playing and transvestism, has "sheer erotic energy that defies definition and dogma." [4]

In the 1990s, Giannina Braschi began writing dramatic dialogues in English, Spanish, and Spanglish. [5] Her bilingual experimental novel YO-YO BOING! (Latin American Literary Review Press, 1998) is experimental in format and radical in its defiance of English-only laws, ethnic cleansing campaigns, and the corporate imposition of sameness. [6]

Giannina Braschi is working on a politically-charged collection of essays in English about the fall of the American empire, tentatively entitled: "Hamlet & Segismundo". The work 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. Publisher Barney Rosset, founder of Grove Press and The Evergreen Review, said of Giannina Braschi's latest work, "Fascinating, overwhelming, and what I call superb writing. It's as much a performance piece as it a novel. I'd like to stage it."

[edit] Translations

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. Scholars who have illuminated Giannina Braschi's texts include Jean Franco, David Foster Wallace, Julia Carroll, Francine Masiello, Ilan Stavans, Julio Ortega, Lawrence La Fontaine-Stokes, Laura Loustau, Daniela Daniele, Arnaldo Cruz Malave, Maria Mercedes Carrion, Cristina Garrigos, Francisco Jose Ramos, Dennis Nurkse, and Doris Sommer.

[edit] Titles

  • Asalto al tiempo, Ambitos Literarios, Barcelona, 1980.
  • La poesia de Becquer, Costa Amic, Mexico City, 1982.
  • La comedia profana, Anthropos Editorial del hombre, Barcelona, 1985.
  • Libro de payasos y bufones, Grafica Uno, Giorgio Upiglio, Milan, 1987.
  • El imperio de los sueños, Anthropos Editorial del hombre, Barcelona, 1988.
  • Empire of Dreams (English translation), Yale University Press, New Haven/London, 1994.
  • Yo-Yo Boing!, Latin American Literary Review, Pittsburgh, 1998.
  • El imperio de los suenos, Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico, 2000.

[edit] Awards/honors

[edit] See also

Puerto Rico portal
Literature portal

[edit] References

  1. ^ The Boston Globe, "Spanglish is everywhere now, which is no problema for some, but a pain in the cuello for purists," by Ilan Stavans, 9/14/2003.
  2. ^ The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Review of Giannina Braschi's Yo-Yo Boing, by David Foster Wallace, 1999.
  3. ^ The Evergreen Review's 50th Anniversary Edition, (www.evergreenreview.com), Giannina Braschi, 2007.
  4. ^ Introduction to Giannina Braschi's Empire of Dreams, Alicia Ostriker,Yale University Press, New Haven, 1994.
  5. ^ Lengua Fresca, co-edited by Ilan Stavans and Harold Augenbraum.
  6. ^ Introduction to Giannina Braschi's Yo-Yo Boing!, Doris Sommer, Harvard University, 1998.

[edit] External links

  • [2] Ground Zero, by Giannina Braschi, featured in Evergreen Review, edited by Barney Rosset.
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