Boricua Giannina Braschi’s New Book Putinoika

 

Boricua author Giannina Braschi’s new book Putinoika is an epic tragicomedy of the Trump and Putin Era. Inspired by ancient Greek tragedies, Putinoika unfolds in three-parts: Palinode, Bacchae, and Putinoika. In a world flooding with collusion, delusion, and pollution, hope not only stands its ground in Putinoika, but it elevates us to higher realms with exhilarating new literary forms, poetic expressions, and a renewed faith in creativity. Putinoika insists that poets, philosophers, and lovers have the capacity to create on a scale greater than society’s capacity to destroy. If Waiting for Godot is a threnody of hope in the atomic age, Putinoika is the “Invictus” we didn’t know we were waiting for after the global pandemic.

 

Publisher:        Brown Ink, a new imprint of FlowerSong Press, curated by Frederick Luis Aldama

Illustrators:      Rosaura Rodríguez and Omar Banuchi of Días Cómic; Roi du Lac

ISBN-10: ‎       1963245784
ISBN-13: ‎       978-1963245783

Available through Amazon, FlowerSong Press, or any online bookseller.

 

Praise for Putinoika

 

“In Giannina Braschi’s churning imagination, in her exuberant, upwelling, hilarious and mortifying performances of wonderment, howl, synchronic time, ethical insistence, and linguistic swirl, it’s not unusual to find words such as ‘generosity’ and ‘spirit’ leading, in the same sentence, to ‘welfare,’ ‘radiation,’ and ‘tax deductions.’ If, as in Ezra Pound’s translation of Aristotle, the ‘swift perception of relations’ is truly the ‘hallmark of genius,’ it’s in the brightly lit halls of Braschi’s books where poetry is tested and stamped with such a mark. Like her character, Frenzy, she's a provocateur who believes in and pledges her fidelity only to ‘everything that exists.’”—Forrest Gander, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and Chancellor Emeritus of the Academy of American Poets

 

“Braschi’s most audacious and electrifying creation yet! This thrilling ride spans from classical Greece to front page news, where the supernatural dances with the mundane. Eccentric, hilarious, and profound, Putinoika is the rara avis of modern literature—a true original that shatters conventions and leaves an indelible mark on your soul. As Tony Kushner gives us Angels in America marking the AIDS epidemic and Perestroika, Braschi gives us Putinas in America amidst the global pandemic with Putinoika. Her fearless storytelling sweeps you off your feet.” —Nuria Morgado, Director, North American Academy of the Spanish Language

 

“A tour de force of philosophical poetry and poetical philosophy, offering a biting and hilarious denunciation of Trump’s America.” —Madelena Gonzalez, Chair, Anglophone Literature, University of Avignon

 

“This powerful, funny, profound, wise, crazed book is a wild ride. It is a bomb (a poem?, a novel?, a play?, fiction? essay?, comedy?, drama? all of the above?). It is a meditation on poetry, art, the pandemia, politics, Trump, his wall, the Putinas, the author, Puerto Rico, Oedipus, and Baudelaire. I laughed to tears here and there while the book displays one of the cruelest portraits of our times. Bravo!” —Carmen Boullosa, award-winning novelist and playwright

 

About the Iconic Puerto Rican Author

 

Boricua Giannina Braschi writes poetry, fiction, and political philosophy in Spanish, Spanglish, and English. Her epic works include El imperio de los sueños (Empire of Dreams), Yo-Yo Boing!, United States of Banana, and Putinoika. The Library of Congress calls Braschi “cutting-edge, influential, and even revolutionary,” and PEN America recognizes her as “one of the most revolutionary voices in Latin America today.” Her lifework is the subject of the anthology Poets Philosophers Lovers: On the Writings of Giannina Braschi, edited by Frederick Luis Aldama and Tess O’Dwyer. Braschi has received awards and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, Ford Foundation, Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, and PEN America—as well as Lifetime Achievement honors from the North American Academy of the Spanish Language (ANLE), Cambio 16 news in Spain, and her native city of San Juan, Puerto Rico.

 

Terms frequently associated with Braschi include Postcolonial Literature, Latinx Philosophy, Postdramatic Theatre, McOndo, and Post-Boom. She goes simply by poet.