• DOI:10.1057/s41276-019-00239-2
• Corpus ID: 212759434

Falling for debt: Giannina Braschi, the Latinx avant-garde, and financial terrorism in the United States of Banana

@article{Riofrio2020FallingFD,
  title={Falling for debt: Giannina Braschi, the Latinx avant-garde, and financial terrorism in the United States of Banana},
  author={John Riofrio},
  journal={Latino Studies},
  year={2020},
  volume={18},
  pages={66-81}
}

• John Riofrio
• Published 1 March 2020
• Art
• Latino Studies

Puerto Rican writer Giannina Braschi’s 2011 novel, The United States of Banana, although brilliant and insightful, has been largely under-examined by literary critics. This may be partially attributed to the complexity of her writing and her predilection for utilizing a dizzying array of avant-garde literary techniques at the service of her trenchant critiques of social issues. In this essay I combine scholarship on the avant-garde with research on the economic devastation wrought by the 2008 market crash to examine Braschi’s dense, profound novel. I argue that amid her strategic use of avant-garde techniques, Braschi links post-9/11 fears of terrorism with the daily suffering that stems from a changing, debt-ridden economy to offer a scathing critique of neoliberal economic and social reforms.