Olga Dies Dreaming

Olga Acevedo is the 40-year-old protagonist of this novel. She is the daughter of two Puerto Rican revolutionaries, Blanca and Johnny Acevedo. After Olga’s father passed away from AIDS when she was young and her mother left when she was 13, Olga was raised mostly by her brother, Prieto, and her Abuelita.

Blanca and Johnny wanted their children to be revolutionaries believing in the liberation of Puerto Rico, but as Blanca is quick to tell them, neither has lived up to this dream. Olga is haunted by her mother’s disappointment, calling herself “a terrible person” (21) for working as a wedding planner catering to the needs of the ultra-rich, a profession that her mother dismisses as fitting white stereotypes of subservient Latin people. Olga has achieved success and wealth, but she is of two minds about her profession, using it as a means to enact a sort of vigilante justice on her clients. Many of them over-order at their weddings, so Olga re-sells the unused products they paid for, taking the profit as her own.

After Hurricanes Irma and Maria devastate Puerto Rico, Olga must resolve her identity as a Puerto Rican woman with her inability to be the revolutionary her mother wanted her to become.