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Braschi's Empire of Dreams



Empire of Dreams (El imperio de los sueños, 1988) is a postmodern book of poetry by Giannina Braschi, who is widely considered "one of the most revolutionary voices in Latin American literature today". In 1988, Empire of Dreams debuted in Spain to acclaim as El imperio de los sueños, with an English translation by Tess O'Dwyer later inaugurating the Yale Library of World Literature in Translation (1994). Composed from 1980 to 1986, this series represents the first major phase of Braschi's oeuvre: poetry written entirely in classical and modern Spanish.

Forming a hybrid of prose poetry, drama, musical theater, manifesto, gossip, autobiography, diary, literary theory, and antinovel, Empire of Dreams is a mixed genre trilogy on the culture of excess. The central axis of this epic poem is the Latin American immigrant's optimistic new life in the "Big Apple", which is dramatized by Braschi as the epicenter of the American Dream. However, social and linguistic references to other Latin cities and neighborhoods abound, such as "the Latin American Quarter in Paris, the barrio chino barcelonés, the zaguanes of Borges's Buenos Aires, and the colonial houses in Old San Juan".

The author later wrote the first full-length Spanglish novel Yo-Yo Boing! and a controversial work of political fiction in English, United States of Banana, which provides a scathing critique of the false promise of within the American Dream.


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