[1] It is a cross-genre work that blends experimental theatre, prose poetry, short story, and political philosophy with a manifesto on democracy and American life in a post-9/11 world.

[2] 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.

[7] 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.

"[2] In Part Two, called "United States of Banana", the structure changes from political manifesto and philosophical fiction into an experimental theater play about economic terrorism, U.S. colonialism, liberty, and love.

This act of defiance produces a response from Gertrude—Hamlet’s mother—who concocts a plan to marry Basilio, free Segismundo, and bring him into the same family as Hamlet as the only possible way to save the ancien régime of the imperial United States of Banana from collapsing.