1. Quotes
  2. Authors
  3. Giannina Braschi

Giannina Braschi Quotes

Giannina Braschi is a Puerto Rican writer. She is credited with writing the first Spanglish novel Yo-Yo Boing! , the post-modern poetry trilogy Empire of Dreams and the philosophical fiction United States of Banana , which chronicles the Latin American immigrants' experiences in the United States. "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". She is considered an influential and revolutionary voice in contemporary Latin American literature. Her work has been described as a "synergetic fusion that marks in a determinant fashion the lived experiences of U.S. Hispanics." Written in English, Spanglish, and Spanish, Braschi's work seeks to capture the cultural experience of the 50 million Hispanics in the United States and also seeks to explore the three political options of Puerto Rico: Nation, Colony or Statehood. On the subject of the Island's lack of sovereignty, Braschi stated, "Liberty is not an option — it is a human right."

✵ 5. February 1953

Works

United States of Banana
United States of Banana
Giannina Braschi
Yo-Yo Boing!
Yo-Yo Boing!
Giannina Braschi
Giannina Braschi: 37   quotes 14   likes

Famous Giannina Braschi Quotes

“If you look for an identity you find inequality. If you look for similarities you separate one truth from another.”

Giannina Braschi

Giannina Braschi, in United States of Banana, 2011

“Banks are the temples of America. This is a holy war. Our economy is our religion.”

Giannina Braschi book United States of Banana

United States of Banana (2011)

“Poets and anarchists are always the first to go.
—Where.
—To the frontline. Wherever it is.”

Giannina Braschi book Yo-Yo Boing!

Yo-Yo Boing! (Spanglish novel, 1998)

“I saw a torso falling--no legs--no head--just a torso. I am redundant because I can’t believe what I saw. I saw a torso falling--no legs--no head--just a torso--tumbling in the air--dressed in a bright white shirt--the shirt of the businessman--tucked in--neatly--under the belt--snugly fastened--holding up his pants that had no legs. He had hit a steel girder--and he was dead--dead for a ducat, dead--on the floor of Krispy Krème--with powdered donuts for a head--fresh out of the oven--crispy and round--hot and tasty--and this businessman--on the ground was clutching a briefcase in his hand--and on his finger, the wedding band. I suppose he thought his briefcase was his life--or his wife--or that both were one--because the briefcase was as tight in hand as the wedding band.”

Giannina Braschi book United States of Banana

United States of Banana (2011)

“What does winter or autumn or spring or summer know of memory. They know nothing of memory. They know that seasons pass and return. They know that they are seasons. That they are time. And they know how to affirm themselves. And they know how to impose themselves. And they know how to maintain themselves, What does autumn know of summer. What sorrows do seasons have. None hate. None love. They just pass.”

Giannina Braschi

Empire of Dreams (prose poetry, 1988)

“Poetry must find ways of breaking distance.”

Giannina Braschi book Yo-Yo Boing!

Yo-Yo Boing! (Spanglish novel, 1998)
Context: If I respected languages like you do, I wouldn't write at all. El muro de Berlín fue derribado. Why can't I do the same? Desde la torre de Babel, las lenguas han sido siempre una forma de divorciarnos del resto de la humanidad. Poetry must find ways of breaking distance. I'm not reducing my audience. On the contrary, I'm going to have a bigger audience with the common markets — in Europe — in America. And besides, all languages are dialects that are made to break new grounds. I feel like Dante, Petrarca and Boccaccio, and I even feel like Garcilaso forging a new language. Saludo al nuevo siglo, el siglo del nuevo lenguaje de América, y le digo adiós a la retórica separatista y a los atavismos.

Giannina Braschi Quotes about fear

“This is a vicious circle. This is the fishmarket. This is working for survival. This is survival of the fastest. This is the Darwinist capital of the capitalist world. A head afraid is a head haunted. A head haunted is a head hunted. Run for your life. Run from the guillotine to a head hunter who saves your head and raises your salary—so you’ll be caught in the red of the fishmarket buying gadgets to distract your fragile imagination that is cut in the red market of blood—running and escaping—running again—changing your resume to update the fear you feel of being unemployed tomorrow—in the streets—and from there to welfare—and from there to begging.”

Giannina Braschi book United States of Banana

United States of Banana (2011)

“I fear freedom. I, above all, fear the freedom that is above all feardom.”

Giannina Braschi book United States of Banana

United States of Banana (2011)

“It’s the end of the world. I was excited by the whole situation. Well, if everybody is going to die, die hard, shit, but what do I know? Is this an atomic bomb--the end of the world--the end of the millennium? No more fear of being fired--for typos or tardiness--digressions or recessions--and what a way of being fired--bursting into flames--without two weeks notice--and without six months of unemployment--and without sick leave, vacation, or comp time--without a word of what was to come--on a glorious morning--when nature ran indifferent to the course of man--there came a point when that sunny sky turned into a hellhole of a night—with papers, computers, windows, bricks, bodies falling, and people running and screaming…”

Giannina Braschi book United States of Banana

United States of Banana (2011)

“Imagine, ever since I was a little girl in Puerto Rico, I heard, oh, we don’t want to be like Haiti, we don’t want to be like Cuba. The fear was with being poor like Haiti and being poor like Cuba, and that’s why Puerto Rico never became free because it was afraid of being poor…”

Giannina Braschi

On Puerto Rico in “A Graphic Revolution Talking Poetry & Politics with Giannina Braschi” https://www.academia.edu/36916781/A_Graphic_Revolution_Talking_Poetry_and_Politics_with_Giannina_Braschi in Chiricú Journal (2018)

“Tragedy is all about losing. And humor is all about gaining perspective. Humour returns our gladness. And with gladness comes generosity. Humor returns us to the light and makes us light—it kills grudges, buries bodies–buries revenge—buries blame and guilt—fear and dread. Laughter, like hiccups and sneezes and farts and burps, relieves us of severity.”

Giannina Braschi

On the healing effects of humor in “52 WEEKS / 52 INTERVIEWS: WEEK 34: GIANNINA BRASCHI” http://monkeybicycle.net/52-weeks-52-interviews-week-34-giannina-braschi/ (Monkey Bicycle)

Giannina Braschi Quotes

“I have just turned life into a proverb. I just killed it.”

Giannina Braschi

Empire of Dreams (prose poetry, 1988)

Life

“When the Twin Towers fell—I felt a dentist had pulled out my two front teeth. I could not laugh anymore. And I have the smile of a smiling damned villain. But I also felt the hole in my mouth became a garage, and entering that garage were terrorists in trucks full of explosives and French diplomats—to f*ck us more with other nations—to run over our dead bodies.”

Giannina Braschi book United States of Banana

United States of Banana (2011)

Smile , Dead

“If you want to know what love is, have a child. If you want to know what pain is, bury him.”

Giannina Braschi book Yo-Yo Boing!

Yo-Yo Boing! (Spanglish novel, 1998)

Love , Pain

“Read me, read me. Love me, love.”

Giannina Braschi

Empire of Dreams (prose poetry, 1988)

Love , Reading

“And besides, all languages are dialects that are made to break new grounds.”

Giannina Braschi book Yo-Yo Boing!

Yo-Yo Boing! (Spanglish novel, 1998)
Context: If I respected languages like you do, I wouldn't write at all. El muro de Berlín fue derribado. Why can't I do the same? Desde la torre de Babel, las lenguas han sido siempre una forma de divorciarnos del resto de la humanidad. Poetry must find ways of breaking distance. I'm not reducing my audience. On the contrary, I'm going to have a bigger audience with the common markets — in Europe — in America. And besides, all languages are dialects that are made to break new grounds. I feel like Dante, Petrarca and Boccaccio, and I even feel like Garcilaso forging a new language. Saludo al nuevo siglo, el siglo del nuevo lenguaje de América, y le digo adiós a la retórica separatista y a los atavismos.

“Poetry is this screaming madwoman.”

Giannina Braschi

Empire of Dreams (prose poetry, 1988)

“Metaphors and Similes are the beginning of the democratic system of envy.”

Giannina Braschi book United States of Banana

United States of Banana (2011)

Envy

“I can understand Spanish but I can't understand Puerto Ricans.”

Giannina Braschi book Yo-Yo Boing!

Yo-Yo Boing! (Spanglish novel, 1998)
Variant: We have a similar problem. I can understand English, but I cannot understand Americans.

Understanding

“Only what is fated to die is capable of living. Only what dies lives. Why do you think Christ was killed? They killed him to prove that he wasn’t a god. But in killing him, they immortalized the perishable and transformed man into a god.”

Giannina Braschi

Empire of Dreams (prose poetry, 1988)

God , Fate , Thinking , Christ

“The suicide bomber is an explosion of a contradiction in its paradox, victim and victimizer, yin and yang, two sides of the coin, fire bomb and fire extinguisher, prosecutor and defendant, hangman and hanged.”

Giannina Braschi book United States of Banana

United States of Banana (2011)

Suicide

“The star wasn't poetry until the madwoman discovered it.”

Giannina Braschi

Empire of Dreams (prose poetry, 1988)

Star

“Gods are condemned to live the dream of the imperishable.”

Giannina Braschi

Empire of Dreams (prose poetry, 1988)

God , Dreams

“The United States of America will become the United States of Banana. And Puerto Rico will be the first half-and-half banana republic state incorporated that will secede from the union. Then will come Liberty Island, then Mississippi Burning, Texas BBQ, Kentucky Fried Chicken—all of them—New York Yankees, Jersey Devils—you name it—will want to break apart—and demand a separation—a divorce. Things will not go well for the banana republic when the shackles and chains of democracy break loose and unleash the dogs of war. Separation—divorce—disintegration of subject matters that don’t matter anymore—only verbs—actions. Americans will walk like chickens with their heads cut off.”

Giannina Braschi book United States of Banana

United States of Banana (2011)

War , Dogs , Democracy

“Let's begin by affirming that poetry has died.”

Giannina Braschi

Empire of Dreams (prose poetry, 1988)

“I am egg and always will be, and we are eggs and always will be. Fried eggs. Or rotten eggs. Boiled eggs. Or scrambled eggs. Poached eggs. Or round eggs. Eggs. Eggs. Eggs.”

Giannina Braschi

Empire of Dreams (prose poetry, 1988)

“Acabo de proverbiar la vida. La acabo de matar.”

Giannina Braschi

Empire of Dreams (prose poetry, 1988)

“Behind the word is silence, behind that silence is forgetfulness.”

Giannina Braschi

Empire of Dreams (prose poetry, 1988)

Silence , Forgetting

“Freedom is a demagogue.”

Giannina Braschi book United States of Banana

United States of Banana (2011)

Freedom

“English is a language of mass destruction. Lady Macbeth is a queen of mass destruction. Lear is a king of mass destruction. Hamlet is a prince of mass destruction. Shakespeare is a bard of mass destruction. And Moby Dick is a whale of mass destruction. Why are you a culture of death and destruction? Why do you obliterate villages, cities, and civilizations with your language of mass destruction? Is the destruction worth the destruction? For what purpose did you destroy my language? To impose the sovereignty of your rule of law with weapons of mass destruction—to then say: --I offer you my lifesaver. Now, we can communicate in the same language. English only, please.”

Giannina Braschi book United States of Banana

United States of Banana (2011)

Death , Law , Communication

“Originality is going back to the place where you were what you were—and finding an empty chair. Would you gladly sit on it? No, thank you. It is empty for a reason. That’s where my ass was. Not where my head is now.”

Giannina Braschi book United States of Banana

United States of Banana (2011)

“I want to take poetry to walk other genres. I want poetry to walk through other genres. When I started writing, this was my main concern: get out of poetry. Let poetry walk the streets of New York. Make her cosmopolitan. See the world. Not in these estrofas, not in these stanzas, which are camisas de fuerza. I have to get out of poetry. I have to do what James Joyce did to the novel: he took the novel out of the novel…”

Giannina Braschi

On how she hopes to change poetry by bringing it towards visual art in “A Graphic Revolution Talking Poetry & Politics with Giannina Braschi” https://www.academia.edu/36916781/A_Graphic_Revolution_Talking_Poetry_and_Politics_with_Giannina_Braschi in Chiricú Journal (2018)

World , Making love

“Metaphors are the beginning of the democratic system of envy. They look for what is dissimilar and try to make it similar. Everything that is similar cuts the edge of what is unique.”

Giannina Braschi
Envy , Making love

Similar authors

Julio Cortázar photo
Julio Cortázar 29
Argentinian writer
Luciano De Crescenzo photo
Luciano De Crescenzo 1
Italian writer
Naguib Mahfouz photo
Naguib Mahfouz 7
Egyptian writer
Frank Herbert photo
Frank Herbert 158
American writer
Stefan Zweig photo
Stefan Zweig 106
Austrian writer
Alessandro Baricco photo
Alessandro Baricco 9
Italian writer
André Breton photo
André Breton 70
French writer
Jorge Amado photo
Jorge Amado 4
Brazilian writer
Eduardo Galeano photo
Eduardo Galeano 12
Uruguayan writer
William Saroyan photo
William Saroyan 190
American writer