Xochitl Gonzalez, "Olga Dies Dreaming" (Flatiron Books, 2022)
Burned By Books
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The Limits of Race and Privileges
Olga is wonderfully an homage to Brooklyn, but it's also a very mournful consideration of how gentrification has pressed and priced out a lot of the vast diversity of immigrant communities that have in the past made the burro so interesting. You've described the increasingly limited appeal that Olga sees of the restaurants and bars to the quote, same patron: skinny, pale kids with NPR,. Tote bags, intricate line tattoos visible under their frilly, ironic sundresses, or Bernie Sanders t-shirts with the sleeves cut off. Do you feel like her Brooklyn is ceasing to exist? I think that a lot of wit came from anger, actually, of the eradication of the place
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