Olga Dies Dreaming is a domestic fiction novel by Xochitl Gonzalez, set in New York in 2017 and written in the third-person perspective. Gonzalez is an American writer born in 1977. She is a graduate of Brown University with a degree in creative writing. Olga Dies Dreaming is her debut novel, published in 2022, and it emerged as the New York Times Best Seller in 2022. The idea of writing the novel came into Gonzalez’s mind when she was on the Q train reading a book titled The Battle for Paradise by Naomi Klein. After alighting from the train, Gonzalez went t a cool location and drafted the plot for her first novel Olga Dies Dreaming.
The novel is about the lives of Olga and her brother Pedro in New York. The parents of Olga and her brother are Puerto Ricans living in New York. While Olga and her brother are young, the mother, Blanca, leaves them under the care of their grandmother, and she joins political activism. Unfortunately, the grandmother later dies during the season of hurricane winds. Olga grows up to become a wedding planner for rich families, and Pedro becomes a congressional representative in Brooklyn.
In the later years, Blanca returns to the lives of Olga and Pedro, and she tries to convince them to shun the American way of life and embrace their Puerto Rican culture. Blanca discourages Olga from planning wedding occasions for the whites and instead persuades her to promote the Puerto Rican culture. However, it is too late because Olga and Pedro are already westernized, and they do everything in the American way.
Xochitl Gonzalez’s novel Olga Dies Dreaming explores the themes of political dishonesty, the American dream, and family life. The novel is set during the worst hurricane in the history of Puerto Rico. The novel received positive reviews from the Washington Post, which played a key role in bringing her into the limelight in the literature world.
