Poets, Philosophers, Lovers - (Latinx and Latin American Profiles) by Frederick Luis Aldama & Tess O'Dwyer (Hardcover)

About the Book

A Collection of Essays that Cast a Light on Giannina Braschi's Exquisite, Experimental, and Genre and Gender Bending Work

Book Synopsis

With a foreword by Ilan Stavans

This collection of essays, by fifteen scholars across diverse fields, explores forty years of writing by Giannina Braschi, one of the most revolutionary Latinx authors of her generation. Since the 1980s, Braschi's linguistic and structural ingenuities, radical thinking, and poetic hilarity have spanned the genres of theatre, poetry, fiction, essay, musical, manifesto, political philosophy, and spoken word. Her best-known titles are El imperio de los sueños, Yo-Yo Boing!, and United States of Banana. She writes in Spanish, Spanglish, and English and embraces timely and enduring subjects: love, liberty, creativity, environment, economy, censorship, borders, immigration, debt, incarceration, colonialization, terrorism, and revolution. Her work has been widely adapted into theater, photography, film, lithography, painting, sculpture, comics, and music. The essays in this volume explore the marvelous ways that Braschi's texts shake upside down our ideas of ourselves and enrich our understanding of how powerful narratives can wake us to our higher expectations.

Review Quotes

A new collection of essays by well-known scholars helps foster a deeper understanding of the innovation and relevance of [Braschi's] work.-- "Hispanic New York"

At long last! Aldama and O'Dwyer have brought together a lineup of talent to match the vivacious audacity of Giannina Braschi. Admirers of Braschi will feast on every sumptuous page of this book, and they'll return to her lush storyworlds with renewed vigor. Poets, Philosophers, Lovers reveals the challenging necessity of this transformative Latinx author.--Christopher González, Utah State University

Los quinceensayos de este libro, escritos por otros tantos estudiosos de la literatura, conforman una reflexiónerudita sobre su obra. Son también un raro homenaje a una escritora puertorriqueña que ha superado losencasillamientos usuales con que se suele silenciar la voz de los nuestros.-- "Nuevo Dia"

One of the most comprehensive and critically engaging publications that covers the breadth and scope of Braschi's literary production. . . . Perfectly aligns with Braschi's literary proposals and aesthetics by providing a variety of critical voices and commentary on her work that help contextualize and further comprehend the important legacy of Braschi's incomparable genius and craft.-- "Centro Journal"

The book's main thrust is to reintroduce Braschi to a wider academic public and reframe her, through the critical lens of the day, as 'one of today's foremost experimental Latinx authors.' For Aldama and the book's contributors, Braschi participates in a long, albeit less visible, branch of Latinx writing that has been and continues to be driven by aesthetic and literary experimentation rather than explicit realist representation.-- "World Literature Today"

The fifteen essays in this book, written by as many scholars of literature, make up a scholarly collection on the work. They are also a rare tribute to a Puerto Rican writer who has overcome the usual pigeonholing with which the voice of our people is usually silenced.-- "Cambio16"

The recent volume Poets, Philosophers, Lovers: On the Writings of Giannina Braschi, edited by Frederick Luis Aldama and Tess O'Dwyer, has come to fill a major gap in the critical bibliography on Braschi's work and life. . . . [It] is a comprehensive collection on the work that Giannina Braschi has been developing since the 1980s and, with rigorous and accessible texts, represents an essential resource for future Braschian studies, as well as diaspora literature in general.-- "Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies"

This is a welcome and well-conceived volume on the extraordinary work of Giannina Braschi, a Puerto Rican writer and consummate New Yorker whose creative decolonizing of aesthetics and culture deserves sustained critical engagement. . . . It is a testimony to the editors and contributors of Poets, Philosophers, Lovers that they are able to convey the energy, wit, and aesthetic nuance of Braschi's timely interventions.-- "American Book Review"

About the Author

Frederick Luis Aldama (Editor)
Frederick Luis Aldama, aka Professor Latinx, is the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities and founder and director of the Latinx Pop Lab at the University of Texas, as well as adjunct Distinguished University Professor at The Ohio State University. He is an award-winning author of dozens of books as well as editor of nine academic press book series. His fiction includes the children's books The Adventures of Chupacabra Charlie and Con Papá/With Papá.

Tess O'Dwyer (Editor)
Tess O'Dwyer won the Columbia University Translation Center Award for her rendition of Giannina Braschi's postmodern poetry epic Empire of Dreams and translated Braschi's Spanglish classic Yo-Yo Boing! as well as Martin Rivas by Alberto Blest Gana. She is the Chairman of the Board of the Academy of American Poets.