(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Contemporary Fiction Views: Fully living a life of art in a glorious novel [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2024-06-11 An emotional woman passionately in love with life, her art and a man, celebrates an upcoming big event and teases her way through a cocktail party. It will be the last night of her life. But her story is not over. In Xochitl Gonzalez's brilliant new novel, Anita de Monte Laughs Last, the title character is a Cuban woman who grew up in the United States. She was sent to this country by her family during Operation Peter Pan. More than 14,000 unaccompanied minors were sent by their families in 1960-1962 over fears that Castro would put the children in indoctrination centers. As a young woman, Anita discovers ways to create art that celebrate her womanhood and her deep knowledge that she is as thoroughly a part of nature as running water and clay. When she meets renowned minimalist artist Jack Martin, whose stern works of utilitarian objects placed just so has caught on, it's the proverbial mix of fire and ice. Their marriage is volatile. Jack needs Anita, especially as someone to admire him and reflect his glory. Their individual artistic paths are yin and yang, opposites in every way. When Martin recognizes this, he is livid. Her individualism enrages him. Anita realizes it sooner, and glories in it. She makes sure that the one project on which they collaborated reflects her celebration of nature as it overtakes his minimalism. Anita's art is more about her being a part of the natural world. She posed in some early artworks covered in mud, in a river, running through a field. Walking along a dirt road that turns muddy with a sudden rain shower, she remembers: The smell of wet earth reminded me of the Iowa River. I remembered the silt of it that I buried myself in for my art. But as I walked there, the terra of Cuba on my toes, I realized that the truth of that piece was a desperation. To do with my body what I had yearned to do with my life: Fit in. Not the "fit in" of conforming, but the "fit in" of knowing that one is part of one's world. On her last night, Anita arrives at the apartment of Jack's gallerist, Tilly, excited about new solo shows. Jack's attempts to control her laughter and dancing at the party only spur her to be more flamboyant. At home, his anger turns into an attack on her. He pushes her out the window. But he hasn't destroyed her spirit. What happens to Anita can be considered in more than one way. She tells her continuing story as a ghost, a spirit, with the home base of a ceiba tree in her native Cuba. But what happens to Jack and Tilly after Anita's death also could be seen as the rewards of guilt. As well as the consequences of what happens when someone is remembered. Or deliberately forgotten. Years later, after Jack goes back to creating and showing art, Anita is mostly forgotten. She's not even mentioned in passing as Jack is taught in universities. One young Latina graduate student, Raquel, has talked herself into making Jack the subject of her thesis. Her handsome adviser is a big fan of Jack's. So is Nick, the preppy white boy, a rising star artist, who has claimed Raquel as his own. Because the novel unfolds in alternating chapters among Anita, Jack and Raquel, it's easy for the reader to see that Raquel's journey is starting to mirror Anita's. Raquel doesn't even know Anita exists. But this is a graduate student who still seeks knowledge, and her journey is just beginning. The way Gonzalez sets up the stories of Anita and Raquel, and then turns each into a magnificent celebration of what makes them fully themselves, is exhilarating. Anita de Monte Laughs Last is a novel of both feelings and ideas about creativity. Raquel's professor, during a discussion with her about why he chose Jack Martin as his own subject, talks about the ongoing changes in not just art, but also politics, culture and society in general. It's not a conversation. Everybody is doing these grand-scale neoclasically perfect historical paintings and Delacroix comes in and is, like, 'Hey, we're gonna add in feelings and romance.' And people get on board with that, and then eventually, that becomes establishment and somebody else, like Manet, comes around. And is like, 'Here's a grand-scale figurative painting, but it' of a naked lady having lunch with two modern gentlemen.' And there's scandal and outrage and excitement, until that becomes sort of normal, and then someone like Degas comes in." Raquel gets it. To her, it's like the battles in the rap world. Her professor's POV helps set the stage for the battle of wills between Anita and Jack, and whether there will be one between Raquel and Nick. The way in which women are routinely ignored in their fields of endeavor is explicitly tied to the way in which unconfident angry men use and abuse women. Acknowledging that this takes place in the world, but refusing to give in, is a strength of the novel. So is the notion that as long as an artist's work is known, that artist will not be forgotten. The same applies to someone who is loved. During the moments various characters realize this, or celebrate this, it feels like watching the feel-good part of a movie where the sunlight streams and the music swells. The subthemes of home, especially Cuba, which Anita left as a very young child, and family, with Raquel both loving and trying not to be embarrassed by her mother and sister, are part of the mosaic that makes up what matters to both characters. Anita came to the realization of how she belongs. Raquel does the same when she realizes that she has been trying to conform to the "norms" of a white, male-centralized art world that mirrors the male hierarchy society. The way her realization of how she will live her life fits in with what she figures out about the art world gives a solid sense of completeness to this novel. Because, as my long-time readers know, "only connect". Anita de Monte Laughs Last is definitely a novel of how to live in fragments no longer. ------------------------------------— Some of the new fiction released is featured below. Links are to our Readers and Book Lovers colleague DebtorsPrison store, The Literate Lizard, and blurbs are, as usual, from the publishers. The Marriage of Anna Maye Potts by Dewitt Henry Set in mid-century industrial suburban America, filled with a tight-knit ensemble cast of deeply realized characters, this earthy, beautifully nuanced story reveals to us an everyday, hard-working woman as she finds her way on her own terms --through work, family, grief and love, and then — not so much finds as makes, a place for herself in the world. Ask Me Again by Clare Sestanovich At sixteen, Eva meets Jamie by chance. She lives in middle-class south Brooklyn; he comes from the super rich of upper Manhattan. She’s observant, cautious, often insecure; he’s curious, bold, full of mysteries. These two questers are drawn together in a strange and profound friendship, tested by forces larger than themselves. As Eva follows a path of conventional achievement—a prestigious degree, a classic romance, the start of an ambitious career—Jamie seeks out more radical experiments in finding himself: renouncing his family, joining a political movement, and eventually even talking to God. All Friends Are Necessary by Tomas Moniz Efren “Chino” Flores has just moved back to the Bay Area from Seattle, jumping from sublet to sublet. In Washington, he was an adored middle school biology teacher with a loving wife, and a child on the way—that is, until a stunning loss upended his life. Now he’s working temp jobs, terrified of commitment, and struggling to put himself back out into the world. But there to nurture Chino is a coterie of new and old friends and lovers who form a protective web around him. The Material by Camille Bordas Can comedy be taught? Someone, at some point, seemed to think so. The Chicago Stand-Up program has enrolled young comedians for nearly a decade. Its teachers and students all know how bits work—in theory, at least. They know that there's a line between sharp and cruel, that sad becomes funny at the right angle, that the worst is the best, the truth is the worst, and any moment of your life that isn’t a punchline will either get you to a punchline or force you to be one. Zan: Stories by Suzi Ehtesham-Zadeh A university student strips off her hijab in the streets of Tehran and films herself as part of a daring protest movement. A wealthy Iranian woman living in Atlanta maintains a secret life as a burlesque dancer. A teenager slips out of a hotel room at night to skinny dip in the toxic Caspian Sea. An Iranian lesbian agonizes over her coming out and her father’s subsequent attempts to re-educate her. These are some of the many windows Zan opens into the complex lives of Iranian women today -– those who continue to suffer oppression under the Islamic Republic, those who are crafting new identities in America, and those who hover somewhere in between. An Abundance of Wild Roses by Feryal Ali-Gauhar In the Black Mountains of Pakistan, the discovery of an unconscious, unknown man is the first stone in an avalanche of chaos. The head of the village is beset with problems - including the injured stranger - and failing to find his way out. His daughter receives a love letter and incurs her father's wrath. A lame boy foretells disaster, but nobody is listening. Trapped in terrible danger, a wolf-dog is battling ice and death to save a soldier's life. Beaten by her addict husband for bearing him only daughters, a woman is pregnant again - but can this child save her? Under the Neomoon by Wolfgang Hilbig An abandoned construction site. Glowering pits and furnaces. A lone man in a bungalow. Widely considered to be one of the great German writers of the twentieth century, Wolfgang Hilbig’s dark visions have long held readers aloft with their musical language and uncompromising vision of the modern world. (Note: First published in East Germany in 1982.) Rina by Young-sook Kang Rina is a defector from a country that might be North Korea, traversing an “empty and futile” landscape. Along the way, she is forced to work at a chemical plant, murders a few people, becomes a prostitute, runs a lucrative bar, and finds a solace in a motley family of wanderers all as disenfranchised as she. Brutal and unflinching, with elements of the mythic and grotesque interspersed with hard-edged realism, Rina is a pioneering work of Korean postmodernism. Tongueless by Lau Yee-Wa Tongueless follows two rival teachers at a secondary school in Hong Kong who are instructed to switch from teaching in Cantonese to Mandarin—or lose their jobs. Apolitical and focusing on surviving and thriving in their professional environment, Wai and Ling each approach the challenge differently. Wai, awkward and unpopular, becomes obsessed with Mandarin learning; Ling, knowing how to please her superiors and colleagues, thinks she can tactfully dodge the Mandarin challenge by deploying her social savviness. The Sons of El Rey by Alex Espinoza Ernesto Vega has lived many lives, from pig farmer to construction worker to famed luchador El Rey Coyote, yet he has always worn a mask. He was discovered by a local lucha libre trainer at a time when luchadores — Mexican wrestlers donning flamboyant masks and capes — were treated as daredevils or rock stars. Ernesto found fame, rapidly gaining name rec­ognition across Mexico, but at great expense, nearly costing him his marriage to his wife Elena. Years later, in East Los Angeles, his son, Freddy Vega, is struggling to save his father’s gym while Freddy’s own son, Julian, is searching for professional and romantic fulfillment as a Mexican American gay man refusing to be defined by stereotypes. Tehrangeles by Porochista Khakpour Iranian-American multimillionaires Ali and Homa Milani have it all — a McMansion in the hills of Los Angeles, a microwaveable snack empire, and four spirited daughters. There’s Violet, the big-hearted aspiring model; Roxanna, the chaotic influencer; Mina, the chronically-online overachiever; and the impressionable health fanatic Haylee. On the verge of landing their own reality TV show, the Milanis realize their deepest secrets are about to be dragged out into the open before the cameras even roll. The Dunning-Kruger Effect by Andrés Stoopendaal Convinced of his own moral and intellectual superiority, the nameless protagonist of this debut novel is also paralyzed by self-consciousness. Yet, inspired by Stephen King’s On Writing, he decides to dedicate four hours a day to work on his own novel over the course of one summer. Only, he must also balance his creative goals with a part-time government job and looking after his girlfriend’s possibly brain-damaged Pomeranian dog. Too bad he’s uninspired by his job, almost kills the dog, and realizes his novel is slowly morphing into misguided fan fiction about French writer and enfant terrible Michel Houellebecq. The Sisters K by Maureen Sun After years of estrangement, Minah, Sarah, and Esther have been forced together again. Called to their father’s deathbed, the sisters must confront a man little changed by the fact of his mortality. Vicious and pathetic in equal measure, Eugene Kim wants one thing: to see which of his children will abject themselves for his favor — and more importantly, his fortune. Margo's Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe As the child of a Hooters waitress and an ex-pro wrestler, Margo Millet's always known she’d have to make it on her own. So she enrolls at her local junior college, even though she can’t imagine how she’ll ever make a living. She’s still figuring things out and never planned to have an affair with her English professor—and while the affair is brief, it isn’t brief enough to keep her from getting pregnant. Despite everyone’s advice, she decides to keep the baby, mostly out of naiveté and a yearning for something bigger. Gretel and the Great War by Adam Ehrlich Sachs Vienna, 1919. A once-mighty empire has finally come crashing down—and a mysterious young woman, unable to speak, has turned up on the streets. A doctor appeals to the public for information about her past and receives a single response, from a sanatorium patient who claims to be her father. The man reveals only her name: Gretel. But he encloses a bedtime story he asks the doctor to read aloud to her, about an Architect whose radically modern creation has caused a great scandal. The next day a second story arrives, about a Ballet Master who develops a new position of the feet. Twenty-four more stories follow in alphabetical order, about an Immunologist and a Jeweler, a Revolutionary and a Satirist, a Waif and an X-ray Technician and a Zionist. Crossing paths and purposes, their stories interweave until a single picture emerges, that of a decadent, death-obsessed, oversexed empire buzzing with the ideas of Freud and Karl Kraus. Return to Valetto by Dominic Smith On a hilltop in Umbria sits Valetto. Once a thriving village that survived centuries of earthquakes and landslides and became a hub of resistance and refuge during World War II, it has since been nearly abandoned. Only ten remain, including the widows Serafino—three eccentric sisters and their steely centenarian mother—who live quietly in their medieval villa. Then their nephew and grandson, Hugh, a historian, returns. But someone else has arrived before him, laying claim to the cottage where Hugh spent his childhood summers. Forgiving Imelda Marcos by Nathan Go After suffering a serious heart injury, Lito Macaraeg reaches out to his estranged son—a journalist who lives in the United States, far from Lito’s Manila nursing home—to promise him a scoop: the story of a secret meeting between Imelda Marcos and Corazon Aquino years before. Imelda, best known for her excessive shoe collection, was the flamboyant wife of the late Philippine dictator; Corazon was the wife of the opposition politician who was allegedly killed by the Marcoses. An unassuming housewife, Corazon rose up after her husband’s death to lead the massive rallies that eventually toppled the Marcos dictatorship. Nightbloom by Peace Adzo Medie When Selasi and Akorfa were young girls in Ghana, they were more than just cousins; they were inseparable. Selasi was exuberant and funny, Akorfa quiet and studious. They would do anything for each other, imploring their parents to let them be together, sharing their secrets and desires and private jokes. Then Selasi begins to change, becoming hostile and quiet; her grades suffer; she builds a space around herself, shutting Akorfa out. Meanwhile, Akorfa is accepted to an American university with the goal of becoming a doctor. The Last of the African Kings by Maryse Condé The Last of the African Kings follows the wayward fortunes of a noble African family. It begins with the regal Béhanzin, an African king who opposed French colonialism and was exiled to distant Martinique. In the course of this brilliant novel, Maryse Condé tells of Béhanzin’s scattered offspring and their lives in the Caribbean and the United States. 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