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    United States of Banana
    United States of Banana
    United States of Banana
    Audiobook7 hours

    United States of Banana

    Written by Giannina Braschi

    Narrated by Adriana Sananes

    3/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Giannina Braschi explores the cultural and political journey of nearly 50 million Hispanic Americans living in the United States in this explosive new work of fiction, her first written in originally in English. United States of Banana takes place at the Statue of Liberty in post-9/11 New York City, where Hamlet, Zarathustra, and Giannina are on a quest to free the Puerto Rican prisoner Segismundo. Segismundo has been imprisoned for more than one hundred years, hidden away by his father, the king of the United States of Banana, for the crime of having been born. But when the king remarries, he frees his son, and for the sake of reconciliation, makes Puerto Rico the fifty-first state and grants American passports to all Latin American citizens. This staggering show of benevolence rocks the global community, causing an unexpected power shift with far-reaching implications. In a world struggling to realign itself in favor of liberty, United States of Banana is a force to be reckoned with in literature, art, and politics.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateDec 11, 2012
    ISBN9781469201009
    United States of Banana
    Author

    Giannina Braschi

    A native of Puerto Rico, Giannina Braschi is an influential and versatile writer of poetry, fiction, and essays. She was a tennis champion and fashion model during her youth in San Juan, before moving to Madrid to study with the Spanish poets Carlos Busoño and Claudio Rodriguez. She lived in Paris, Rome, and London before settling in New York, where she has taught at Rutgers University, City University, and Colgate University. She holds a Ph.D. in Golden Age Spanish literature and has written on Cervantes, Garcilaso, Lorca, Machado, Vallejo, and Bécquer. Her cutting-edge work in Spanish, Spanglish, and English has been recognized by the National Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, el diario, PEN American Center, Ford Foundation, Danforth Scholarship, InterAmericas, Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, and Reed Foundation. She currently serves as a literary judge for the PEN Book Awards.

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    • 3/5
      This book has been inaccurately publicized and blurbed as "a novel" or "fiction". It's not really fiction and it certainly is not a novel. It contains two parts; the first, and shorter, is a succession of prose poems concerning life in New York in the days after 9/11, and the second is a pseudo-play wherein the author intellectually dialogues with various characters (mostly real-life authors and literary characters), the cast headed by Hamlet, the Statue of Liberty (and her Jewish cat) and Nietzsche's Zarathustra. This is a great premise, but it isn't carried out very well (as opposed to the 9/11 material, which is a crummy premise carried out beautifully). The author is determined to bring everything back to two topics: Puerto Rico and America-bashing. The first is parochial and becomes very tiresome, and as for the second, all but the thickest of cultural observers have long since sussed that American popular culture and foreign policy have their shortcomings and foibles. We get it, okay? The book often becomes memorable, though, in the strength of the author's unchaining of language, comparable to the finest moments of the great surrealists of a century ago such as Marinetti and Breton, and her often memorable turns of phrase; it's going to be difficult not to plagiarize some of her best imagery.