“You know,” says co-protagonist Raquel Toro, just 32 pages into Xochitl Gonzalez’s Anita de Monte Laughs Last, “I used to feel so smart. Before I got here, you know? I would just blurt out opinions. I believed in what I was thinking. And now, I don’t know. If I don’t have fucking footnotes and firsthand sources and shit ready, I’m afraid to talk.”
It’s spring 1998 in Providence, Rhode Island and Raquel is at the senior art show for the uber-privileged and fellow Brown University student Nick Fitzsimmons, contemplating the art/history world she’s spent three years studying. Nick will, perhaps unsurprisingly, become Raquel’s love interest for the remainder of the story, and Raquel finds herself returning to this conundrum time and time again — both within their relationship and also within the discriminatory art and academic world she’s devoted herself to. She doesn’t feel like herself — senses, accurately, the art institution’s interest in silencing her, a Latina woman from Brooklyn, who often feels out of place among the New England ivy, where she is taught to revere white men and their brutalist, derivative art.
Her thesis advisor, a venerated white male art historian, is particularly fixated on the life and legacy of sculptor Jack Martin, the epitome of “some guy from Worcester” (hello), and Raquel tries to follow suit and win her professor’s approval (which could seriously boost her career). Almost immediately — at least in the context of the novel — Raquel grows less and less comfortable with this arrangement, all the while becoming increasingly aware of her boyfriend’s attempts to assimilate her to his affluent lifestyle, which he and his mother suggest she should be grateful for. (No thanks.)
It’s in these moments that the novel is at its strongest, as Raquel attempts to disentangle feeling unaccepted by a school and industry that ostensibly invited her to the party. But, gaining admission to a social sphere and feeling safe and accepted by that sphere are two different things — the rub oft-ignored by bootstrap lore, which generally ends with an open door without much thought about what waits on the other side.
The novel’s title refers to Jack Martin’s wife, the first-person protagonist of a 1985 New York timeline running parallel to Raquel’s. Anita de Monte, a Cuban artist, is the artistic antithesis of her husband, thrashing at any and all of Martin’s attempts to subdue her creatively and personally. Her refusal to fall in line and allow Martin to emotionally and artistically trample her ultimately leads to her death, after which she, the rising star, is all but erased from the record.
Perhaps the most surprising twist lies outside the bounds of the book: Anita de Monte is based on the real-life artist Ana Mendieta, who did in fact, according to a retrospective piece from The New York Times published nearly in tandem with Anita de Monte’s release, fall out of a window in New York after fighting with her sculptor husband. Anita’s narrative — until a sudden turn into the supernatural — follows the broad strokes of Mendieta’s story nearly beat for beat.
Still, as we say, the fact that something actually happened doesn’t always make for a great story. The facts of Anita’s life — and Raquel’s — are fundamentally interesting, but instead of complexity, both characters’ interiority relies on the same, repetitive thought cycles. For Anita, she is (rightfully) pissed off at her husband, whom she derides, loathes, and later menaces from the afterlife. Aside from montage moments about her life in Cuba and trauma incurred at an American orphanage, we learn very little else about her. In Raquel’s case, she feels isolated in the exclusionary, often opaque art world. At the same time, she must confront that devoting her life to this world is also ostracizing her from her mother and sister, even though — salt in the wound — they ardently support her. She doesn’t know how to please everyone, leaving her to suffer and feel she’s coming up short in both directions. Her feelings, raw and real and relatable as they may be, are flattened by a lack of dynamism. Both Anita and Raquel operate, for much of the book, at a single speed.
The same, it should be said, is true of the book’s villains, who are villains through and through, from start to finish.
It makes one wonder if this is why the pacing feels off at times. Although Raquel’s discovery of Anita’s legacy is pitched as the plot’s primary tension, that discovery doesn’t come until the story is nearly over. The reader is left waiting and waiting for the moment — they know it is coming because it’s directly mentioned in the book’s description — but when it finally happens, the novel is nearly over.
The pacing difficulties rear their head on the micro level, as well. Characters move awkwardly around each other and around the rooms they occupy. They sometimes burst into tears with no warning, and emotions rise and fall with such rapidity it makes one wonder if scenes were condensed for space. Drama is great in any story, and we are always looking for the elusive propulsion, but sometimes it feels nice to dwell for a page or two, to lose yourself in the world an author has created and embody the tears, not just see them.
Talk Vomit’s spring edition is in production! The only way to secure your print copy is by pre-ordering. Every dollar goes to covering Talk Vomit operations + paying our writers. Pre-order at our website here before April 7 to get yours. Thank you SO MUCH for your support!