United States of Banana. A Graphic Novel by Giannina Braschi and Joakim Lindengren (review)

Masterfully illustrated by the Swedish cartoonist Joakim Lindengren, and with a robust and solid introduction by editors Amanda M. Smith and Amy Sheeran, United States of Banana. A Graphic Novel (2021) (first published in Swedish in 2017), is an adaptation of the postmodern allegorical novel United States of Banana (2011), masterfully written by Giannina Braschi, a Puerto Rican writer based in New York who defies any attempt to be classified. We can argue that United States of Banana (USB) also defies any attempt to be classified. It is a philosophically rich novel that crosses genres such as fiction, poetry, manifesto, and experimental theater. It is a political allegory of US imperialism and Puerto Rican independence; the autobiographical character Giannina, along with Shakespeare's Hamlet and Nietzsche's Zarathustra, go in a mission to liberate Segismundo, another literary character from La vida es sueño (Life is a Dream) by Pedro Calderón de la Barca, who is imprisoned beneath the skirt of the Statue of Liberty. As a metaphor, liberating Segismundo would mean liberating Puerto Rico from the US.

USB is also described as a manifesto on democracy in a post-9/11 world, and as a declaration of personal independence. It touches on many topics, relevant not only in today's world, but also in tomorrow's world, since they engage with anything and everything that makes us human: feelings, thoughts, emotions, or behaviors when confronted with politics, language, immigration, love, friendship, terrorism, global warning, revolution . . . Giannina Braschi understands the temperament of humanity. And nothing more human than the characters that navigate the worlds and underworlds of this novel since, in their quest for liberation, they meet and confront the insecurity and uncertainty found in our current precarious, unstable, dangerous, difficult world.

Using the interplay of Braschi's philosophical, poetic prose and Lindengren's captivating and thought-provoking drawings "with playful images worthy of the text's ludic spirit" (xiv), this graphic novel helps to interpret the moral or political significance of the allegorical characters, places, or events of the text, and renews its relevance, especially after experiencing Trump's presidency and the US response to the devastation of Hurricanes Irma and María in Puerto Rico in September 2017. USB's relevance is rigorously explained by United States of Banana. A Graphic Novel's editors, Amanda M. Smith and Amy Sheridan, in their illuminating "Introduction," where they consider "what new meanings might arise when readers encounter USB as a graphic novel in the current political context" (vii). Lindengren's images play a central role. For example, in this graphic version, the three political options of Puerto Rico—i.e., independence (nation), commonwealth status (colony), and statehood (state)—, described in USB as "wishy" (independence: their wish), "wishy-washy" (commonwealth status: washing their wishes, neither a nation nor a state), and "washy" (statehood: no more nation, no more wish), are visually represented by Lindengren as three playful chicks (20, 30, 35, 48-9, 73). And Donald Trump appears as the character Oliver Exterminator (30, 76), "advisor to the king of the United States of Banana" (30), a figure that Braschi invented based on a popular Puerto Rican pest control jingle (xiv). Lindengren's images bring USB into the era of the Trump administration, emphasizing the continuity of Puerto Rican trauma across time and thus enhancing the text's relevance for the current political moment.

His drawings are strikingly beautiful and powerful in form and meaning, such as the ones that represent the Statue of Liberty. On their quest to liberate Segismundo from the dungeon at the Statue of Liberty, Giannina, Zarathustra and Hamlet confront a Statue that steps down from her podium and dialogues with her visitors. When the character Giannina tells her that "[h] uman beings can't bear very much reality. They need a prop in their hands. It used to be the cigarette" (12), we see Lindengren's image of...