Olga Dies Dreaming

I loved this book because it evoked the New York City I grew up in during the 1980s and 1990s. I was an outer-borough kid, raised in Queens, then Brooklyn.

Gonzalez does a brilliant job capturing the toll that a life dedicated to political radicalism can take on a person’s kids. The sister and brother at the heart of her story experience hurt and make mistakes, but they also have each other to rely on in the most critical ways. I enjoyed that theme.

At the heart of this book is a mother who appears mostly off stage but is truly the director of this fabulous story of a brother and sister trying to define and live their own American dreams in the shadow of US colonialization of Puerto Rico.

It’s a great read. Biting, funny, and political.

This is a book I press into everyone’s hands these days. It’s a book that speaks to many people, who have ever tried and failed to both be of family and get away from family. 

Olga Dies Dreaming had me laughing on the very first page, when the eponymous Olga—a wedding planner—irreverently lists what it is that signifies wealth at a wedding and plots to steal the fancy napkins from just such an event. Though the book is hard to define, it's another one that is both funny and tragic, sweeping and intimate, full of characters who are both deeply flawed and for whom you'll find yourself rooting. As for its New York-ness, Olga lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and while the neighborhood is historically Puerto Rican (as is Olga), it is gentrifying. Olga, similarly,… show more.