United States of Banana  United States of Banana (2011) is a postmodern novel by the Puerto Rican poet Giannina Braschi. Her first book written fully in English, it is a cross-genre work which blends experimental theatre, prose poetry, short story, and political philosophy with a manifesto on democracy and American life in a post–9/11 world. The book dramatizes the global war on terror and narrates the author's displacement after the attacks from her home in the Battery Park neighborhood in New York City. The work addresses Latin American immigration to the United States, Puerto Rico's colonial status, and "power imbalances within the Americas." Part One, titled as "Ground Zero", offers a poetic critique of 21st-century capitalism and corporate censorship with its depictions of New York City before and during the September 11 attacks. Part One unfolds through a collection of metafiction, short stories, and essays on American culture since the attacks on the World Trade Center. Using 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." In Part Two, called "United States of Banana", the structure radically changes from philosophical fiction into an experimental theater work about economic terrorism, U.S. colonialism, liberty, and love. Historical literary characters Hamlet and Zarathustra (Zoroaster) join the author's alter-ego, Giannina, on a quest to liberate the Puerto Rican prisoner Segismundo from the dungeon of the Statue of Liberty, where he has been held by his father, the king of the United States of Banana, for more than 100 years, for the crime of having been born. When the King remarries, he frees his son, and for the sake of reconciliation, makes Puerto Rico the fifty-first state and grants American passports to all Latin American citizens. The experimental theatre play dramatizes the plight of prisoners in the United States, Puerto Rico's position as an American territory, and Braschi's struggle for liberty. By having the people of Puerto Rico vote on Segismundo's liberty, the work satirizes the three political options of Puerto Rico: statehood, nation, or colony. The prison scenes feature Middle Eastern prisoners of war, including those classified as terrorists, who are detained indefinitely.