Novelist connects Last Night in Brooklyn to neighborhood change

On Monday, May 4, a crowd gathered at Greenlight Bookstore to hear Xochitl Gonzalez in conversation with Jacqueline Woodson to discuss her new book, Last Night in Brooklyn. The highly anticipated novel explores themes of gentrification, wealth and cultural identity. Gonzalez, a New York Times bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize finalist, is a master at writing her own life experiences into her books. In an exclusive interview with The Sunset Post, Gonzalez discusses her first novel, Olga Dies Dreaming, which is influenced by her lived experience in Sunset Park.

“I just think it’s the most beautiful park in the city,” Gonzalez reflects; she spent her childhood afternoons on Fifth Avenue, at the Sunset Pool and at the top of the hill in Sunset Park.

“I grew up across the street from a bowling alley, and there was nothing near it. It was like, factories, and plumbing supply, and sanitation companies,” Gonzalez explains, describing the area surrounding her grandparents’ house on 60th Street. “Generally, we did everything in Sunset Park. That is where you went. That is where my family was.”

In Olga Dies Dreaming, Olga Acevedo’s family gathers in her grandparents’ home to prepare party favors for her cousin’s wedding. Family members spread out, rhinestoning bottles of champagne, placing stickers over their labels and tying tulle ribbon bows to their necks.

“An old Sunset Park apartment would have a dining room. You could have your kids’ birthday party there, or like a family party there, and people did.” Homes are a place to gather, and gathering spaces build community. New development can affect who moves into a neighborhood, and then the culture of an area changes. Gonzalez saw this happen in Fort Greene.

“A lot of the new construction takes away that common space for you to host; it’s assumed that you’re gonna be like, a childless couple... it doesn’t presume that you’re gonna live near family or friends, and that you’ll want to have people over,” Gonzalez laments. “These are the things that change a neighborhood.” But to her delight and relief, Sunset Park maintains its identity.

“I think it’s done a really good job of having wonderful community advocates who have fought for things like the bike lanes, who have done public-private partnerships like the Sunset Park Library... when I go to visit, it still feels like the same place.”

Gonzalez recalls the Christmas Masses, Day of the Dead celebrations and overall strong Catholic church communities in the area, another theme that appears in Olga Dies Dreaming. Olga bonds with her abuelita, her grandmother, through catechism. Despite being denied the sacrament of Holy Communion by her apostate father, she returns to her abuelita’s favorite pew after her death for the familiar comfort of the space.

“My friend’s daughter just had her quinceañera in the basement of the church — I mean, people can still afford to make a quince,” Gonzalez says. “I think there’s still an accessibility to customs that in other parts of Brooklyn, people have gotten priced out of.”

Gentrification is a major theme in much of Gonzalez’s work. Housing is only one element that is affected when a neighborhood is gentrified. Education is another.

“Kids should not have to know in junior high what they want to focus on for the rest of their lives. It’s ridiculous. It’s not just ridiculous, it’s intensely classist,” Gonzalez explains. Her high school alma mater now expects applicants to apply to specific majors, rather than explore their passions once they arrive, like Gonzalez did. “It’s not just that it makes you need to know what you want to do, it relies on you having parents who had the means and the time to expose you to these other things, and I find that bias horrible.”

She didn’t launch her writing career until her 40s, and wants young artists to have the same freedom to discover themselves. “You don’t need to make your money doing something to be that thing. You can have a job and be writing, and that’s totally valid, you still are a writer. In fact, your time working is going to just make what you write more interesting.”

Xochitl Gonzalez followed her own advice. She is currently working on Need Blind, a memoir on social class, but until it comes out in early 2027, readers can find her existing books on Bookshop, and her reporting and commentary in The Atlantic.