This live recording of Latina to Latina was made possible thanks to the generous support of the Fund for the City of New York and Telemundo's Mujres Imparables.

Who gets to have a legacy?

That question is at the heart of Sochiel Gonzalez's new novel, Anita De Monte, laughs last.

And it's where we began our conversation taped before a live audience of Latina to Latina listeners Empoderistas at the William Vale.

To those of you who are able to show up, we loved seeing you. Thank you for your support and for reminding us why we produce this podcast. For those

of you who weren't able to make it, here's what you missed. Thank you, Sochiel Gonzalez, for making us all feel so deeply, deeply seen.

I texted Sochill earlier and I was like, I'm not going to explain the

plot of this book. It is too complicated. I'm going to ask you to give the pitch for this book. So explain

what Anida de Monti Last Last is about. So first, thank you for having me. Thank you all for coming. This is like very special to get

to do these. I've been so excited since you asked me because getting to do these in a space of

just Latino women is so rare and really beautiful because you're who I write for. So, um, so this book

starts with an artist Anita Anita de Monte, in 1985. And when you meet her,

it's clear she's in a challenged marriage to an older, more famous, more powerful artist. But

she's kind of on the rise and he's sort of hitting a plateau, which happens sometimes.

And you find it right away that she died mysteriously.

They start out at a party having a fight in front of a lot of people.

And then she's like, and then later when they found out that I died, was I push?

Did I jump?

No one knows.

And then we go to 1998 and we follow Raquel Toro, who is like,

you know, low-income first-gen student at Brown. She is challenged. She's really ambitious and she

falls in love with art history and doesn't realize it's sort of a kind of space for people

...