Olga Dies Dreaming

When books are written around a mass tragedy that happened in real life, I always feel conflicted. I remember some of the news coverage after hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico and hearing about the giant power outage that to this day has differing reports of how long it actually lasted. I purposely searched out reviews of this book from actual Puerto Ricans that went through hurricane Maria and both of the ones I read showed that they were upset about this book.
Olga and Prieto are such strange main characters. They are written with the purpose of showing the struggle of being part of the diaspora and stay true to the values of your community and the urge to assimilate into the corruptive rich white societal practices. All of their most negative traits come from this urge, but the author paints their mom, who was an activist for the liberation of Puerto Rico turned radical, as the most evil character. She is a very one note villain. It's confusing, to say the least. All except one of the characters in this book was written in a way where you hate them more than you like them. Matteo was really the only one that wasn't compromised. It's not even worth mentioning Dick because of course he is trash. He is a member of the only true monolith in this world: the old, white, and corrupt. I really hated every one of his POV scenes. I felt like this book was a lot, but also wasn't enough. I don't know how else to explain it.