Stephanie Jane reviewed United States Of Banana by Giannina Braschi
A challenging read
3 stars
I had already gathered from other reviewers that United States Of Banana was going to be a challenging read and I can certainly concur on that point. While I did enjoy aspects of this undeniably original and unique work, other parts left me struggling to keep up with what was going on or just left me standing, bewildered, in Giannina Braschi's wake.
The book is written partly in a first person monologue and partly as a play between disparate characters including Hamlet, Zarathustra and the Statue of Liberty. I found I got the most out of the monologues, several of which I thought were politically incisive and deftly portrayed concepts with which I either wholeheartedly agreed or which I had not previously considered so a lot of United States Of Banana did give me food for thought.
Where I lost the connection however was where I had no knowledge of …
I had already gathered from other reviewers that United States Of Banana was going to be a challenging read and I can certainly concur on that point. While I did enjoy aspects of this undeniably original and unique work, other parts left me struggling to keep up with what was going on or just left me standing, bewildered, in Giannina Braschi's wake.
The book is written partly in a first person monologue and partly as a play between disparate characters including Hamlet, Zarathustra and the Statue of Liberty. I found I got the most out of the monologues, several of which I thought were politically incisive and deftly portrayed concepts with which I either wholeheartedly agreed or which I had not previously considered so a lot of United States Of Banana did give me food for thought.
Where I lost the connection however was where I had no knowledge of the characters the fictional Giannina was interacting with. I have seen pictures of the Statue of Liberty and a production of Shakespeare's Hamlet, but Zarathustra and Segismundo were completely new names to me so I feel I needed to have familiarised myself with their stories before attempting to understand how they fitted into United States Of Banana. The same was true of the ancient Greek philosophers who joined the cast in later chapters. I knew of Socrates and his ideas, but not in sufficient detail and knew pretty much nothing at all of the others. This meant that many of the connections and allusions that are essential to understanding Braschi's ideas sadly sailed straight over my head.
On a positive note, I am now keen to remedy these gaps in my knowledge so recommendations of other books, particularly those exploring and explaining Segismundo and Zarathustra will be gratefully received. I'm planning to keep my copy of United States Of Banana, rather than deleting it as I usually do with read books, and giving it another go in due course. There was enough to grip me in the parts I did understand, that I want to have a similar engagement with the whole book.