“If you want to know what love is, have a child. If you want to know what pain is, bury him.”
Yo-Yo Boing! (Spanglish novel, 1998)
Quotes from book
Yo-Yo Boing!
Yo-Yo Boing! is a 1998 novel in English, Spanish, and Spanglish by Puerto Rican poet and novelist Giannina Braschi. The book mixes elements of poetry, fiction, essay, musical, manifesto, treatise, bastinado, memoir, and drama. The book dramatizes the tensions between Anglo-American and Hispanic-American cultures in New York City.
“Poets and anarchists are always the first to go.
—Where.
—To the frontline. Wherever it is.”
Yo-Yo Boing! (Spanglish novel, 1998)
“Poetry must find ways of breaking distance.”
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.
“I can understand Spanish but I can't understand Puerto Ricans.”
Yo-Yo Boing! (Spanglish novel, 1998)
Variant: We have a similar problem. I can understand English, but I cannot understand Americans.
“And besides, all languages are dialects that are made to break new grounds.”
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.
