Giannina Braschi

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".

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 manifestations, with singers Bad Bunny, Residente, and Ricky Martin, that led to the Governor's resignation.

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 [she] condemned corporate censorship and control."

In the 1990s, Braschi wrote and performed dramatic dialogues in Spanglish. Her code-switching Spanglish novel Yo-Yo Boing! (1998) 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".

With a PhD in Hispanic Literatures from State University of New York, Stony Brook (1980), 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.

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 (Assault on Time, 1980), La Comedia profana (Profane Comedy, 1985), and El Imperio de los sueños (Empire of Dreams, 1988). 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."

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 ("Pilo") 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.

Giannina Braschi (born February 5, 1953) is a Puerto Rican writer based in New York City. Her notable works include Empire of Dreams (1988), Yo-Yo Boing! (1998) and United States of Banana (2011).