mood music: Fantasmas – humbe
I have complicated feelings about this book, and so I will preface by saying that I am rating it 3.75/5, rounding up on here. The beginning was a little slow, but it picked up for me about a fifth of the way through, and I couldn’t put it down after that. Gonzalez is a talented writer, able to craft fully formed, vibrant characters with narration bouncing off the page. If you like one of her characters, you really like them. If you hate one, you will detest them. She pulls no punches when it comes to fully fleshing out her subjects.
But here is where I find myself disappointed. I had no idea that the titular Anita de Monte was based on a real performance artist named Ana Mendieta. She is never mentioned at any point in the story, nor in the acknowledgments or the dedication, and the similarities are quite clear once you go through Mendieta’s brief biography, her life cut short by a fall from the 34th floor of her Greenwich Village residence in 1985. Depending on who you ask, the fall was either an accident or intentional. Her husband, minimalist artist Carl Andre, was acquitted of her murder at trial and continued to find success in the years following, up until his death earlier this year.
The story is a beautiful homage to Mendieta; after discovering that Gonzalez was inspired by her story, in addition to her background attending Brown University, I began to dig deeper into the artist who I was not familiar with. Mendieta was born in Havana, Cuba; at the age of 13, she was forced to live in exile in America along with the rest of her after her father’s involvement in the Cuban Resistance was uncovered. Her art pieces are stunning, a testament to her life and story coming through with each one I have seen. One of my favorites is a piece from her Siluetas Series; she is lying on the ground surrounded by large stones and boulders, almost like a burial site, and she is covered head to toe in small white flowers that seemingly bloom from her body.
Gonzalez has spoken during several interviews about Mendieta’s influence on her latest work. She holds Mendieta in high praise, so I find it strange that she never spoke with her family, who retain ownership over her estate, before publishing this novel. Mendieta’s family has made it clear that they have no connection to the book and are disappointed in Gonzalez moving forward, creating a story that parallels Ana’s life, without their blessing or consent. But public figures and their stories are public domain, aren’t they? The never-ending biopics and memoir adaptations that Hollywood rolls out annually are a testament to that. However, Mendieta’s family has been consistent that the art world successfully erased Ana’s memory from history while simultaneously trying to profit, one way or another, from her work. I feel that, in a way, Gonzalez has done the same thing by failing to contact the Mendieta estate about her intention to write this book, and not mentioning Mendieta once in the book as the inspiration behind the story.