Olga Dies Dreaming

“‘I suppose though,’ Matteo offered, ‘most of us in New York live double lives, with a secret of some sort living behind closed doors.’”

Both Olga and Prieto have secrets, the foremost being their mother and her revolutionary activities. Blanca has had a profound effect on each of their lives, though they are hesitant to let this come to light. Ultimately, they learn to take away the power of her words by speaking them aloud to family members who love and accept them.

“Querida, one day my work will make you proud. You will see our people take off the shackles of oppression and say, ‘Mami helped to do that.’ And you can take pride, knowing your sacrifice was a part of it. This is my word.”

For as long as Olga can remember, she has believed that being motherless is a sacrifice that she made for revolution and for the liberation of Puerto Rico. However, during the course of the novel, she realizes that Blanca’s abandonment was a selfish act. Tía Lola points out that Blanca never had the “mothering gene” (229). Olga did not make a sacrifice; her mother made it for her.

“In the aftermath of the Spice It Up debacle, Olga realized that she’d allowed herself to become distracted from the true American dream—accumulating money—by its phantom cousin, accumulating fame. She would never make that mistake again.”

At the beginning of the novel, Olga views success as having achieved wealth; to get there, she creates a lucrative business, in which she skims from her clients to further add to her own personal capital. Later, however, she changes focus, letting go her obsession with status in favor of having a community and love in her life.

“Rather than be irritated, she thought, she should focus on the infallible hilarity of the ultra-wealthy to be pennywise when it came to compensating human sweat, and dollar-foolish when it came to everything else.”

Olga is struck by the seemingly contradictory nature of the ultra-rich, and she uses their hypocrisy to her advantage. Olga sees this as performing vigilante justice—they would only spend the money elsewhere, so why shouldn’t she have it. This mimics the corruption that results from Puerto Rico’s dependence on the United States. By the end of the novel, Olga no longer wants anything to do with catering to her wealthy clients.

“The pleasure of being lusted for was amplified by the consciousness that she might be the only thing he’d ever coveted that couldn’t be his.”

Having been ignored by white students in college and resentful of wealthy families able to purchase whatever they want without a second thought, Olga sleeps with Dick as a form of revenge. She knows that he wants to be in a relationship with her, but she feels powerful by always holding back, not caring about his feelings.

“By the time she hit high school she felt exhausted of explaining it, and simply resigned herself to not revisiting the past with strangers. But Matteo’s life trajectory, and his openness about it, made her feel a glimmer of possibility that this time she might be understood.”

Olga unexpectedly opens up to Matteo after keeping herself closed off. Olga hid her mother’s abuse from her family, and hid her mother’s activities from teachers, coworkers, and clients. With Matteo, she allows herself to be completely vulnerable—a step that foreshadows that by the end of the novel, she will be willing to share more with her aunt and her cousin.

“Being the subject of such sentiment disgusted her, made her feel small. She vowed to fix her face, to don a mask impenetrable to truth. That instinct–to put the mask on–rose again now. She tried to shrug it off. To try something different this time. To tell the whole truth.”

Since she was 13, Olga has hated the pity she receives from those who learn about her mother’s abandonment. However, the protective shell she has forged also blocks her from being able to feel her emotions and from recognizing the negative effects her mother’s rhetoric has had on her life.

“Though he couldn’t pinpoint why blocking such a banal procedural hearing could be of such important to this group, he sadly knew that this many white men so laser focused on Puerto Rico could mean nothing good. His Papi had always told him that the United States made Puerto Rico’s handcuffs, but it was other Puerto Ricans who helped put them on. He didn’t quite get what Papi meant until now.”

American Colonialism lies at the heart of the way the US treats Puerto Rico in this novel. Gonzalez draws attention to the negative effects of American machinations on the island. The US government has long used Puerto Ricans themselves to carry out its aims. Here, Prieto feels like he is simply a cog in the machine, rather than a player working within the system.

“Dear God, please let me know what it is to feel loved again.”

Until her death, Abuelita loved Olga unconditionally—her only real experience of what love without reservations might feel like. Here, alone in church, Olga feels as close as she can to her grandmother, and her plea for love shows that her definition of success has changed from wanting money to wanting to be in community.

“One night, we heard this Brother perform this poem, and it broke my heart. In his verses I heard my family’s life. They were characters—Juan, Miguel, Milagros, Olga, Manuel—but as far as I was concerned he could’ve named them Isabel, Richie, JoJo, and Lola, because he—Pedro Pietri—captured my family. All of them chasing an impossible dream: to be accepted by a nation that viewed them with contempt.”

Here, Blanca is referencing Pedro Pietri’s real-life poem “Puerto Rican Obituary,” which mourns Puerto Rican immigrants who lose their identity when they assimilate into America’s capitalist system. The novel draws its title from this poem’s description of an Olga who loses herself to materialism. By using this reference, Blanca poisons Olga’s view of her family, suggesting that they are white-washed and emphasizing that Olga should follow in the footsteps of the revolutionary Olga Garriga.

“She wanted to say that she was sorry his mother had died, that she was sorry he had felt lost. That she understood pain like that. That, for her, instead of filling her house, she had slowly stripped herself bare, until there was nothing. But she was too out of the practice of loving, in that moment, to say those things.”

Olga has a difficult time accepting the love that Matteo offers her. It has been so long since she had a relationship filled with love. The last time she felt love so encompassing was likely when Abuelita was alive. This quote also speaks to the lasting effects of Blanca’s decision to leave—Olga felt lost as a result and can thus empathize with Matteo’s sense of grief at his mother’s death.

“You must remember, mijo, even people who were once your sails can become your anchors.”

Blanca writes this sentiment to Prieto about his father, but as Prieto realizes by the end of the novel, Blanca herself has been an anchor weighing him down by making him feel like he has failed to advocate for his ancestral homeland. Eventually, he lets Blanca’s disappointment go when he recognizes that she does not care about him or their family.

“The Yanqui has counted on us being asleep for years, but their neglect and exploitation is slowly waking up all of Borikén, and when they rise from their nap, we will be there.”

The negative effects American colonialism in Puerto Rico lie just under its surface, and the island is ready to erupt given enough provocation. Blanca’s words are prophetic: In the novel’s forward flash conclusion, what she describes indeed comes to pass. Blanca’s relationship with Olga is the reverse dynamic: Blanca neglects ignores Olga and abuses her so much that Olga reaches her breaking point, overthrowing Blanca’s influence on her once and for all.

“Which is my point, Olga. You have that gene in you. You care for people. You see them. You see their flaws, but you can accept them as they are.”

Olga never gets her wish to be a mother, but it is important to her that she is different than her mother in her treatment of others. Tía Lola calls this difference strength—replacing Blanca tendency to point out flaws in others with a compliment.

“She felt about her mother much as she felt about Puerto Rico itself: mysterious and unknown entities. Her only certainty about either was that they, somehow, were both a part of Olga.”

Olga is knowledgeable about but not emotionally connected to Puerto Rico until the hurricanes. However, the island is ingrained into her very being—a part of her identity and sense of herself. At the end of the novel, Olga speaks explicitly to the experience of being a Puerto Rican watching her family’s homeland be destroyed and purposely left to ruin by the American government.

“It was clear that Puerto Rico was being let to dangle in the wind. This was a familiar place for the United States to leave the island, but somehow, it felt more ominous this time.”

The annexation of Puerto Rico was for the benefit of the US, which did not make the territory into a state, but instead kept it in second-class status, without voting rights. Now the island is seen as a corporate tax shelter—its primary resource land whose value will increase if people leave the island.

“Her mother, though, didn’t know what it was to be deemed the thing less important. Less important than drugs, less important than a cause. Her mother didn’t understand what it required to shake that label—‘less’—to prove it wrong to the world.”

Blanca’s choice to leave was her own selfish desire to be free of family responsibilities; it was not a sacrifice that Olga made. Recognizing that Blanca does not value Olga is an important step for Olga’s liberation.

“But my mother worried that I would take after Olga from Puerto Rican Obituary. That Olga was ashamed of identity and died dreaming of money and being anything other than herself.”

This line from Pedro Pietri’s poem “Puerto Rican Obituary” provides the novel’s title. While Blanca might think that her daughter’s career is equivalent to Pietri’s rueful description of another Olga, the novel’s protagonist has found a way to be herself, accepting the love of her family and Matteo.

“What we are witnessing is the systemic destruction of the Puerto Rican people at the hands of the government, to benefit the ultra-rich and private corporate interests.”

         Toni awkwardly laughed. ‘Oh my, Olga, that sounds a bit conspiratorial, no?’”

Olga’s rant on Good Morning, Later is a microcosm of the hurricanes devastating Puerto Rico. Unwilling to be silent anymore, she bears witness to what is really happening on the island. Importantly, Toni’s comment about Olga being “conspiratorial” also reveals the ways in the American system has normalized its treatment of the island, hiding malicious intent behind benign language.

“It’s no secret, Prieto. I’ve known since you were six years old. A mother always knows.”

Blanca’s revelation that she has always knows Prieto is gay illustrates how little she cares for his happiness, urging him to marry a woman for his political career. She insults him for being blackmailed—something he is vulnerable to because of the homophobia he internalized from her. This, along with his mother’s lack of interest in her granddaughter and her admission that she never wanted to be a mother, pushes Prieto away from Blanca.

“It was a brutal exercise, wrestling with objective reality. To see how their mother had manipulated their lives and their feelings. To see how she attempted to subtly poison the way they saw their aunts and uncles, their cousins, their father, and, even, in some instances, their grandmother. All the people who had loved them in her absence.”

Olga finds peace in showing to everyone in the family the letters her mother sent. In many ways, the act feels like an exorcism, one that frees Olga and Prieto from the malevolent ghost of their mother’s influence. Instead, they find love and acceptance in their family members.

“Each story, each sentence she put out into the world allowed her insides to resume their proper place, reclaiming the space as its own. And when she was done, for a moment, she lay there, appreciating the freedom to fully breathe and relearning the beat of her own heart.”

When Olga finally shares everything about her life with Matteo, she is free from the corrosive nature of coerced secret-keeping. Sharing her pain enables her to seek therapy for her wounds. Only then is she able to look toward the next phase of her life.

“Because you’re saving me—all of us—from being washed away. You’ve put down little anchors, even if it’s just a few. Even if we’re just little dinghies floating in this big sea.”

Matteo is the antithesis of many other real estate developers in the novel. He preserves Puerto Rican and other neighborhood businesses, refusing to raise rent higher than they can pay. He does not put profit over people, as the Selbys do. It is a new version of success and operating within the American system to fight for those who might otherwise be marginalized.