Empire of Dreams
WARNING
You are viewing an older version of the Yalebooks website. Please visit out new website with more updated information and a better user experience: https://www.yalebooks.com
Giannina Braschi; Translated from the Spanish by Tess O`Dwyer; With an Introduction by Alicia Ostriker
View Inside
Format: ClothPrice: $56.00
The work deals with issues of performance, gender ambiguity, and marginality. It is concerned with the boundaries of language and the possibilities of cross-dressing poetry as commercials, diary, tabloids, gossip, confessions, videos, autobiography, musicals, and manifesto. Characters turn into other characters. Clowns, buffoons, shepherds, lead soldiers, magicians, madmen, witches, fortune-tellers, and artists perform their fantasies in the city streets. An antinovel within the book satirizes the writer's role in the modern age and calls for a revolution of poetry. New York City becomes the site of liberation for its marginal citizens, as the narrator is led through a seeming phantasmagoria of internal and external trials in order to experience the center—of political power, of meaning, of feeling, and of personal identity.
"Braschi writes with a strong poetic tradition behind her, and from her erudite standpoint she forges an odd mixture of poetry, prose, drama, and a little of what could be considered music. She imbues her text with jollity and a brilliant energy that stretches its audience from lovers of modernism to seekers of a broadened artistry of language."—Carolyn Kuebler, Review of Contemporary Fiction
"In this striking collection of brief, evocative prose pieces . . . [Braschi] describes moments of experience and their contingencies. . . . As translated by O'Dwyer, her rhythmic, energetic prose is challenging yet accessible."—Publishers Weekly
"Braschi's book is a modern classic, informed with all of the major concerns of our contemporary culture."—Arnaldo Cruz-Malavé
"Braschi invites us into a world in which objects, places, and elements are animated, a world in which the profane comedy of literature is staged in an entirely new way. Empire of Dreams is an absolute joy-ride!"—Jean Franco
"Empire of Dreams is a masterpiece, brilliantly translated. Braschi writes as an accomplished cosmopolitan, heir(ess) to the traditions of Lorca, Neruda, Mistral, and Márquez."—Alicia Ostriker, from the Introduction
Publication Date: August 31, 1994
