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In celebration of Independent Bookstore Day, shop our limited-time sale on bestselling audiobooks from April 22nd-28th. Don’t miss out—purchases support your local bookstore!
Shop nowAnita de Monte Laughs Last
Reese's Book Club Pick (A Novel)
Length
13 hours 36 minutes
Language
English
Narrators
Jessica Pimentel, Jonathan Gregg & Stacy Gonzalez
This audiobook uses AI narration.
We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.
Learn moreBookseller recommendation
“Great storytelling from multiple characters perspective that touches on feminism, gender, power, race and art. Loved this gripping story. Marvelous audiobook. ”
— Anne • Newtonville Books
Bookseller recommendation
“Xochitl Gonzalez does it again! I was completely blown away by Anita de Monte Laughs Last - I learned that this incredible book is based on a real-life Cuban American artist who everyone should know about! I loved the dual timelines telling Anita's story alternating with Raquel's. An art history student in the 1990s, Raquel is a Latinx woman trying to make her way through a white man's world. When she finds her voice, she is formidable! The audiobook narration is perfection and I appreciated the extra emotion and heart the narrators brought to the story. I cannot get over how brilliant this book is, and I can't wait for everyone to read it! ”
— Kate • Bookmarks
Bookseller recommendation
“Anita and Raquel are your every day Latinx women, whose passionate and 'loud' presence are weaponized as 'other' or to be 'tamed'. In this novel, you see both sides of this coin in such a visceral way that it will leave you breathless. Gonzalez holds no punches and the amazingly talented narrators of this audiobook reflected that pure unencumbered emotion, making this an even more personal experience. This novel also tackles the constant battle between art and artist, and whether they should be judged as a unit or separately - regardless of the ramifications this may cause to art history as a whole. Should your art be the only thing remembered when you are gone or the life you led to reach the fame you acquired? Possibly an eternal question, unless you have a character like Anita or Raquel, who will make sure that those silenced are never forgotten.”
— Vina • Kew & Willow Books
This program is read by a full cast of Stacy Gonzalez, Jonathan Gregg, and Jessica Pimentel, best known for her role on Orange Is the New Black.
"The book is clever and original, but what’s more, Jessica Pimentel, a star of Orange Is the New Black, reads Anita as if she’s in a fever dream. There’s a vibrant wickedness to her performance that no doubt will make this one of the best listens of the year."—Vulture
REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK • New York Times bestselling author Xochitl Gonzalez delivers a mesmerizing novel about a first-generation Ivy League student who uncovers the genius work of a female artist decades after her suspicious death
A Most Anticipated Book of 2024: TIME, The Washington Post, Refinery 29, Barnes & Noble, Marie Clare, Real Simple, Entertainment Weekly, LA Daily News, LitHub, The Millions, TODAY.com, HipLatina, Book Riot, Kirkus, and more!
“Anita de Monte Laughs Last is a cry for justice. Writing with urgency and rage, Gonzalez speaks up for those who have been othered and deemed unworthy, robbed of their legacy." ―The Washington Post
"Anita De Monte Laughs Last by Xochitl Gonzalez asks some big questions, like who in art or history is remembered, who is left behind or erased and WHY. I have goosebumps just talking about this story." ―Reese Witherspoon
1985. Anita de Monte, a rising star in the art world, is found dead in New York City; her tragic death is the talk of the town. Until it isn’t. By 1998 Anita’s name has been all but forgotten—certainly by the time Raquel, a third-year art history student is preparing her final thesis. On College Hill, surrounded by privileged students whose futures are already paved out for them, Raquel feels like an outsider. Students of color, like her, are the minority there, and the pressure to work twice as hard for the same opportunities is no secret.
But when Raquel becomes romantically involved with a well-connected older art student, she finds herself unexpectedly rising up the social ranks. As she attempts to straddle both worlds, she stumbles upon Anita’s story, raising questions about the dynamics of her own relationship, which eerily mirrors that of the forgotten artist.
Moving back and forth through time and told from the perspectives of both women, Anita de Monte Laughs Last is a propulsive, witty examination of power, love, and art, daring to ask who gets to be remembered and who is left behind in the rarefied world of the elite.
A Macmillan Audio production from Flatiron Books.
Xochitl Gonzalez is the New York Times bestselling author of Olga Dies Dreaming. Named a Best Book of 2022 by The New York Times, TIME, Kirkus, Washington Post, and NPR, Olga Dies Dreaming was the winner of the Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize in Fiction and the New York City Book Award. Gonzalez is a 2021 MFA graduate from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her nonfiction work has been published in Elle Decor, Allure, Vogue, Real Simple, and The Cut. Her commentary writing for The Atlantic was recognized as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. A native Brooklynite and proud public school graduate, Gonzalez holds a BA from Brown University and lives in her hometown of Brooklyn with her dog, Hectah Lavoe.
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Reviews
"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." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Funny, piercing, and full of moxie, Anita de Monte Laughs Last is unsparing in its assessment of what goes on behind the castle walls, the price people pay to be accepted into those hallowed halls, and what it takes to liberate oneself from the dangers that lurk within. Really, what Xochitl Gonzalez has written is an affirmation for anyone who's ever had to 'work twice as hard to get half as much.' Anita de Monte Laughs Last is rollicking, melodic, tender, and true. And oh so very wise." —Robert Jones, Jr., author of The Prophets, a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction
"Bravo! A remarkable story about reclaiming what has been erased. Reader, enjoy!” —Ana Castillo, author of So Far From God