Xochitl Gonzalez’s Debut Novel Is a Pivotal Examination of Puerto Ricanness
For Puerto Rican and Boricua readers, Gonzalez and her characters breathe new life into the age-old adage Pa’lante. Siempre pa’lante
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Image: Raymond Boyd
“The United States made Puerto Rico’s handcuffs, but it was other Puerto Ricans who helped put them on,” the character Johnny Acevedo tells one of his children in Xochitl Gonzalez’s debut novel Olga Dies Dreaming. It is a line so cutting and so bold that it wrenched the breath immediately from my body, cementing Olga Dies Dreaming as a story that will never truly leave me. The summary for Gonzalez’s novel is almost misleadingly simple, describing a tale of “political corruption” and “familial strife” in the months before, during, and after Hurricane Maria made landfall in Puerto Rico. But between those vibrant covers is a searing, almost painful chastisement for mainland Puerto Ricans like myself, who face a disconnect from their history. While balancing themes of capitalism, love, and revolution, Gonzalez poses a pivotal question to some of her readers: Are you Puerto Rican or are you Boricua? And how do you contend with not being enough of either?
Olga Dies Dreaming follows Olga and Pedro “Prieto” Acevedo, native Brooklynites searching for their piece of the American dream. Olga is a wedding planner, and Pedro is a closeted congressman trying his best to be a man that meets all of the requirements of Latino machismo. Looming large over their lives is Blanca, their mother, who is physically absent for nearly the entire book but nevertheless makes her presence known via the scolding letters she sends her children. In her youth, Blanca was a member of the Young Lords Party; although the group’s presence in New York diminished in the 70s, Blanca carried on the work of liberation by leaving her children behind and embedding herself with revolutionary groups like the Zapatistas. As the story progresses, Olga and Prieto must navigate difficult personal and professional choices in the midst of a rapidly gentrifying Brooklyn, which probably wouldn’t be so difficult if they weren’t keeping secrets from each other—secrets that, somehow, their mother Blanca already knows.
What Gonzalez does best is capture the crisis of identity some mainland Puerto Ricans face, embedding it in her main characters. For instance, Prieto wants to make change for his constituents and the residents of Puerto Rico, but he is kneecapped by private interest groups run by the Selby brother, fictional versions of the Koch brothers. The Selbys force Prieto’s hand on a crucial vote over the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Act of 2016 (PROMESA), which was a disaster for island residents that only exacerbated the effects of Maria. In an effort to wriggle out from underneath the Selbys and learn what may have happened to his mother, Prieto journeys to Puerto Rico with a cover story of assessing the damage of the hurricane. He is at a loss for an island that he refers to as his “cultural inheritance”—but he must also contend with the fact that it is not his island. He has never lived there, and his family, career, and livelihood all exist on the mainland.