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Olga Dies Dreaming

door Xochitl Gonzalez

LedenBesprekingenPopulariteitGemiddelde beoordelingAanhalingen
8043727,204 (3.78)63
"A blazing talent debuts with the tale of a status-driven wedding planner grappling with her social ambitions, absent mother, and Puerto Rican roots, all in the wake of Hurricane María. It's 2017, and Olga and her brother, Pedro "Prieto" Acevedo, are bold-faced names in their hometown of New York. Prieto is a popular congressman representing their gentrifying Latinx neighborhood in Brooklyn while Olga is the tony wedding planner for Manhattan's powerbrokers. Despite their alluring public lives, behind closed doors things are far less rosy. Sure, Olga can orchestrate the love stories of the 1%, but she can't seem to find her own...until she meets Matteo, who forces her to confront the effects of long-held family secrets... Twenty-seven years ago, their mother, Blanca, a Young Lord-turned-radical, abandoned her children to advance a militant political cause, leaving them to be raised by their grandmother. Now, with the winds of hurricane season, Blanca has come barreling back into their lives. Set against the backdrop of New York City in the months surrounding the most devastating hurricane in Puerto Rico's history, Xochitl Gonzalez's Olga Dies Dreaming is a story that examines political corruption, familial strife and the very notion of the American dream-all while asking what it really means to weather a storm"--… (meer)
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1-5 van 37 worden getoond (volgende | toon alle)
Audiobook (mostly)

I loved this book - the audio drew me in immediately and I enjoyed this story that gave me a little bit of everything: romance, family drama, politics, humor, and characters that cover everything from
wedding planners, mobsters, music moguls, terrorists, congressmen, to hoarders.

( )
  hmonkeyreads | Jan 25, 2024 |
Thanks, Maya! ❤️ ( )
  littlezen | Jan 24, 2024 |
Took me a while to finish it but I liked it. ( )
  DKnight0918 | Dec 23, 2023 |
Very good. Entertaining read but also interesting Puerto Rican view and history. The Brooklyn details are fun. A little long for the story told, but a good story about family loyalty, paternal love (or lack thereof) and national pride—how it can all be good and bad or just good or just bad.
  BookyMaven | Dec 6, 2023 |
Someone once told me that there is a theory that the whole of a story is told in the opening few paragraphs of a book. I have taken this to heart and so was a little disappointed to read about wedding napkins, the type of linen they are made out of and how well they absorb spilt liquids. But of course, these are a signal that wealth and capitalism are going to be important elements in this story, and so they are.

Two siblings, Pietro and Olga, are raised by their grandmother and extended family in the Puerto Rican quarter of Brooklyn. Olga becomes a wedding planner and her brother a Congressman for the local area. They are both invested in their culture but have made their way in a wider America through sheer hard graft. And of course, they have secrets, secrets which start to become millstones around their necks until Hurricane Maria devastates Puerto Rica forcing them to rethink their lives.

I didn't really know anything about Puerto Rica and so had to look it up because Olga frequently says that she is American and indeed PR does occupy an unusual space: it is an incorporated territory of the US - an island that is neither a sovereign state nor a US state. It is somewhere that slips between the cracks and that leaves it open to corruption and corporate greed particularly after the hurricane. So this is also a story about identity, the power of the elites and marginalisation of the poor and outsiders.

What really stood out for me, however, was the role of Olga and Pietro's mother. When Olga was twelve her mother left them with their father to go and follow her own dreams and become a leader of a revolutionary group in PR. The children had no means of contacting her although she would send them letters, making it clear that she knew intimate details about their lives and usually letting them know how disappointed she was with them. When Olga left to go to university, intead of praising her, she sent the following:

These bourgeois institutions that do nothing but reaffirm that in a captialist society there are those annointed to rule and those born to serve. Do not confuse admission for a chance at power. This kind of college has no place, even if they offered you one of their precious 'affirmative action' spots. They do not want to teach your people's history; they don't want to read your people's books. They see no value in our culture, or the culture of any minority people.
p67

By the time I had read the first of these letters, I hated their mother. Her letters were manipulative, always critical and demanding, insisting that her children think like her even though she had abandonned them. Amongst all of the issues raised in the book, I think she is the engine of the story, sitting far away, pulling the strings of both siblings.

The book asks us to consider what being a mother means and how much people can expect of us if they left us when we were young. As with so many secret and hurtful ties, they often improve with daylight and eventually can be cut.

If you were asked to categorise this novel by genre, it would be a challenge. When it started it had the feeling of a rom-com - wealthy wedding planner who can't have real relationships. It then slowly morphs into a political thriller when the mother is introduced and her hard- line politics are revealed along with the fact that she knows what her fam ( )
  allthegoodbooks | Oct 13, 2023 |
1-5 van 37 worden getoond (volgende | toon alle)
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I am myself, plus my surroundings, and if I do not preserve the latter, I do not preserve myself.
JOSE ORTEGA Y GASSET
The price of Imperialism is lives.
JUAN GONZALEZ
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For Pop
who taught me to be proud,
and
to all the South Brooklyn girls who stare at the water, dreaming
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The telltale sign that you are at the wedding of a rich person is the napkins.
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"A blazing talent debuts with the tale of a status-driven wedding planner grappling with her social ambitions, absent mother, and Puerto Rican roots, all in the wake of Hurricane María. It's 2017, and Olga and her brother, Pedro "Prieto" Acevedo, are bold-faced names in their hometown of New York. Prieto is a popular congressman representing their gentrifying Latinx neighborhood in Brooklyn while Olga is the tony wedding planner for Manhattan's powerbrokers. Despite their alluring public lives, behind closed doors things are far less rosy. Sure, Olga can orchestrate the love stories of the 1%, but she can't seem to find her own...until she meets Matteo, who forces her to confront the effects of long-held family secrets... Twenty-seven years ago, their mother, Blanca, a Young Lord-turned-radical, abandoned her children to advance a militant political cause, leaving them to be raised by their grandmother. Now, with the winds of hurricane season, Blanca has come barreling back into their lives. Set against the backdrop of New York City in the months surrounding the most devastating hurricane in Puerto Rico's history, Xochitl Gonzalez's Olga Dies Dreaming is a story that examines political corruption, familial strife and the very notion of the American dream-all while asking what it really means to weather a storm"--

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