The Review of Contemporary Fiction

Yo Yo Boing! by Giannina Braschi
David William Foster

Giannina Braschi. Yo Yo Boing! Latin American Literary Review, 1998. 192 pp. Paper: $15.95.

Code switching is a discourse modality usually associated with Chicano writing. However, one of the most notable characteristics of Braschi’s novel is the agile and productive use of an interlingua poised between English and Spanish. By so doing, she breaks substantially with the practice of distinguishing clearly between a Puerto Rican writing in Spanish, with publication in San Juan, and Neo-Rican (or Nuyorican) writing in English, published in the U. S. (the latter may contain isolated words and phrases, but nothing approaching a third, interlingua).
Braschi, who has established herself as an important poet, makes good use of code switching. Her novel is a superb exploration of the lived experiences of urban life for Hispanics, in this case in New York City, and her principal interest is in representing how individuals move in and out of different cultural coordinates, including one so crucial as language. Life for the urban Hispanic is not a parcelling up of the universe into realms that are Spanish and realms that are English, with neat divides separating the private (the idea that Spanish is what is spoken at home and in select intimate situations) from the public (the idea that English is what allows the individual to move in the “real world”). There are unquestionably those, both language purists (English-only champions vs. Spanish-only champions) and cultural nationalists (“you must decide if you want to live as a Puerto Rican or an Anglo-American”), who would wish to hold onto such distinctions. However, as Braschi’s novel so eloquently demonstrates, not only are the worlds of Spanish and English, the Hispanic and the Anglo, now so inextricably intertwined that such cultural and linguistic dichotomies no longer make any sense, but there is now the realm of the third, interlingua, a synergetic fusion that marks in a determinant fashion the lived experiences of U. S. Hispanics. Yo Yo Boing! is a clever X-ray of that sociocultural fact. [David William Foster]


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The Review of Contemporary Fiction Yo Yo Boing! by Giannina Braschi David William Foster Giannina Braschi. Yo Yo Boing! Latin American Literary Review, 1998. 192 pp. Paper: $15.95. Code switching is a discourse modality usually associated with Chicano writing. However, one of the most notable characteristics of Braschi’s novel is the agile and productive use of an interlingua poised between English and Spanish. By so doing, she breaks substantially with the practice of distinguishing clearly between a Puerto Rican writing in Spanish, with publication in San Juan, and Neo-Rican (or Nuyorican) writing in English, published in the U. S. (the latter may contain isolated words and phrases, but nothing approaching a third, interlingua). Braschi, who has established herself as an important poet, makes good use of code switching. Her novel is a superb exploration of the lived experiences of urban life for Hispanics, in this case in New York City, and her principal interest is in representing how individuals move in and out of different cultural coordinates, including one so crucial as language. Life for the urban Hispanic is not a parcelling up of the universe into realms that are Spanish and realms that are English, with neat divides separating the private (the idea that Spanish is what is spoken at home and in select intimate situations) from the public (the idea that English is what allows the individual to move in the “real world”). There are unquestionably those, both language purists (English-only champions vs. Spanish-only champions) and cultural nationalists (“you must decide if you want to live as a Puerto Rican or an Anglo-American”), who would wish to hold onto such distinctions. However, as Braschi’s novel so eloquently demonstrates, not only are the worlds of Spanish and English, the Hispanic and the Anglo, now so inextricably intertwined that such cultural and linguistic dichotomies no longer make any sense, but there is now the realm of the third, interlingua, a synergetic fusion that marks in a determinant fashion the lived experiences of U. S. Hispanics. Yo Yo Boing! is a clever X-ray of that sociocultural fact. [David William Foster]

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