United States of Banana takes place at the Statue of Liberty in post-9/11 New York City, where Hamlet, Zarathustra, and Giannina are on a quest to free the Puerto Rican prisoner Segismundo. Segismundo has been imprisoned for more than one hundred years, hidden away by his father, the king of the United States of Banana, for the crime of having been born. But when the king remarries, he frees his son, and for the sake of reconciliation, makes Puerto Rico the fifty-first state and grants American passportsto all Latin American citizens. This staggering show of benevolence rocks the global community, causing an unexpected power shift with far reaching implications --

This groundbreaking novel, set in New York City during the 1990s, is guaranteed to be unlike any literary experience you have ever had. Acclaimed Puerto Rican author Giannini Braschi has crafted this creative and insightful examination of the Hispanic-American experience, taking on the voices of a variety of characters — painters, poets, sculptors, singers, writers, filmmakers, actors, directors, set designers, editors, and philosophers — to draw on their various cultural, economic, and geopolitical backgrounds to engage in lively cultural dialogue. Their topics include love, sex, food, music, books, inspiration, despair, infidelity, jobs, debt, war, and world news. Braschi’s discourse winds throughout the city’s public, corporate, and domestic settings, offering an inside look at the cultural conflicts that can occur when Anglo Americans and Latin Americans live, work, and play together. Hailed by Publishers Weekly as “a literary liberation,” this energetic and comical novel celebrates the contradiction that makes contemporary American culture so wonderfully diverse. Praise for Yo-Yo Boing!: “Known for their radical linguistic and structural inventions, as well as for their overt political thrust…Giannina Braschi’s postmodern poetry collection Empire of Dreams and her ground-breaking bilingual novel Yo-Yo Boing! are an “in-your-face assertion” of the vitality of Latino culture in the US.” - The New York Daily News“The novel, evoking the name of the island’s famous comedian Yo-Yo Boing!, is neither fully written in English or Spanish, but rather sashays between the two languages much the way Puerto Rico itself sashays between two cultures, two identities, and two languages.” - The San Juan Star“Braschi’s novel is...a literary liberation. The interlocutors...yo-yo from subject to subject: writers, films, sex, childhood, family and ultimately Puerto Rican artistic expression in New York City. Allusions come helter-skelter, as Fellini, Pee-Wee Herman, Nabokov and even Columbia University Latin Americanist Jean Franco are invoked, celebrated, and derided. Braschi’s melange of prose and poetry... is admirable for its energy (and) its experimental format.” - Publishers Weekly