An unflinching examination of power and privilege ... A compelling and beautiful homage to this overlooked artist and an uncompromising indictment of a White-centered, male-dominated establishment that silences some voices while elevating others.
Gonzalez's depiction of the racial and economic dynamics of Raquel's boastfully liberal yet starkly socially stratified Ivy League college is scalpel sharp and painfully accurate ... The questions the text raises are abundant ... Elegantly written and constructed, Gonzalez's second novel brilliantly surpasses the promise of her popular debut.
The seamless overlap between real life and fictional counterparts, and the faithful reproduction of such well-established facts, conveys the author’s intention to offer a crystal clear clé to this roman à clef ... If Gonzalez’s intention is to compare the experiences of these two women against their common backdrop, her decision to set her protagonists only 13 years apart is curious. Who questions how little progress was made when so little time has passed? Spacing Anita’s and Raquel’s lives further apart would have allowed the author to emphasize what has changed in the art world, alongside what has not ... After Anita’s death, the novel takes a sharp detour into magical realism, following the artist into a liminal, post-death existence that incorporates her posthumous commentary ... It asks a good deal of a reader to shape-shift with Anita, and while many may gladly make that jump with the author, I found I wasn’t one of them. In the end, it was simply a leap (or, more likely, a push) too far.
Deserves a mouse on her doorstep in gratitude ... Inspired by and dedicated to artist Ana Mendieta in light of her tragic death, this is a brutal but ultimately heartwarming and certainly thought-provoking novel of Latinx magic, family, and feminine power.
Though told with humor and a light touch, Anita de Monte Laughs Last doesn’t shy away from serious issues: the erasure of women from the art history canon and the racism often faced by first generation students of color at Ivy League colleges
Astute ... In addition to the intrigue generated by Raquel’s search for answers about de Monte’s death, Gonzalez crafts excoriating and whip-smart commentary on the art world’s Eurocentric conceptions of beauty and the racism faced by first-generation students of color. This is incandescent.
