Anita de Monte Laughs Last

Xochitl Gonzalez bases the character of Anita de Monte on the Cuban artist Ana Mendieta. Gonzalez stays relatively true to Mendieta’s life, and many of the novel’s details reflect various aspects of Mendieta’s history, her work, and the controversy surrounding her death. Mendieta was born into an affluent family in Havana, Cuba in 1948. Her father was an attorney who rose to prominence in the pre-revolutionary regime of dictator Fulgencio Batista, and her mother, a chemist, was the granddaughter of a prominent sugar mill owner. Shortly after the revolution, Mendieta and her sister were sent to the United States as part of the Pedro Pan (Peter Pan) flights, a CIA-backed initiative that allowed Cubans who opposed the new, post-revolutionary Castro regime to send their children to be educated in the United States. Because Mendieta’s family was persecuted by Castro for their devout Catholicism, they sought to save their children from the ideological indoctrination that had become part of the Cuban school system.

After their arrival in the United States, Mendieta and her sister settled in Iowa. Mendieta eventually earned a BA, an MA, and an MFA in painting from the University of Iowa. She drew inspiration from the avant-garde movement of her day, but her work was deeply personal, and her pieces reflect her interest in feminism, spiritualism, and the hybrid, Afro-Caribbean culture of her native Cuba.