Olga Dies Dreaming is a debut novel by Xochitl Gonzalez, published in 2021. It is a story of two Puerto Rican-American siblings, Olga and Prieto, who struggle with their family legacy, their identity, and their place in the world. Olga is a successful wedding planner who is disillusioned by the consumerism and superficiality of her industry. Prieto is a rising congressman who is blackmailed by corrupt developers who want to gentrify his Brooklyn neighborhood. Both of them are haunted by the absence of their mother, who left them to join a Puerto Rican revolutionary group when they were children.
The novel is a satire of the American dream, a critique of capitalism and political corruption, and a exploration of love, loyalty, and forgiveness. It also portrays the challenges and joys of being a Nuyorican (a New Yorker of Puerto Rican descent) in a society that often marginalizes and stereotypes them. The novel draws on the author’s own experience as a wedding planner and a Nuyorican, as well as the historical and cultural context of Puerto Rico’s relationship with the United States.
Xóchitl González is a native of Brooklyn, New York, where she was raised by her maternal grandparents in South Brooklyn. A proud graduate of the New York City public school system, she studied performing arts at Edward R. Murrow high school before earning her B.A. in Fine Art and Art History at Brown University in 1999. Nearly twenty years later, on the eve of her 40th birthday, she decided to listen to the long whispered dream of writing. She attended The Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and then was accepted to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop where she was an Iowa Arts Fellow and recipient of the Michener-Copernicus Prize for Fiction. She completed her MFA in May of 2021 at the tender age of 43. Before writing, she worked as an entrepreneur, consultant, wedding planner, fund-raiser, tarot reader, and writer of etiquette columns. She currently lives back in Brooklyn with her dog Hectah Lavoe.
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