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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.

"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, author of Permissible Narratives: The Promise of Latino/a Literature
 

“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

“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

“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

“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

Frederick Luis Aldama is distinguished university professor at the Ohio State University with a joint appointment in Spanish and Portuguese as well as faculty affiliation in film studies and the Center for Cognitive and Brain Sciences. He is the award-winning author, co-author, and editor of over 40 books and the editor of 9 book series. For more on Aldama visit https://professorlatinx.osu.edu/.
 
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.