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Olga Isabel Acevedo
A second-generation Puerto Rican from Brooklyn, who is a sought-after celebrity who caters to the wealthiest. Despite her success in planning weddings, her love life is quite lacking. And then there's the issue with her radical mother...
- Category Traitor: Her mother spares no punches in expressing her disappointment in her daughter's career choice, claiming that she's made herself into a maid for rich white folks.
- The Cobbler's Children Have No Shoes: Olga's an uber-successful wedding planner. She is nearing middle age and has yet to find a husband.
- Colorism: In one of Blanca's earlier letters, she bluntly tells Olga that the only reason she was accepted at her majority-white Ive League school was because "pretty and fair, and speaks in a way that didn't offend white skin."
- Heroic BSoD: Olga goes through this for months after being raped by Dick.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Olga finally breaks her silence on the situation on P.R., and calls out America for their modern-day colonialism of the Puerto Rico on live TV. Unfortunately, her attempt at spreading awareness rattles the feelings of her rich, white clients, who all boycott her wedding business, forcing her to sell it. She also receives xenophobic comments to "go back to her country".
- She tries to score solar panels from Dick post-break-up as a favour to her mother, who plans to distribute them to the impoverished Puerto Ricans affected by the hurricane. When she Dick realizes that she has no intention of getting back together, and is sleeping with Matteo, he rapes her.
- Parental Abandonment: Her and Prieto's mother, Blanca had abandoned them when they were thirteen and seventeen, respectively. Their dad dies of AIDS shorty after. Neither of them have every fully recovered from this.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Gives an awesome one on live TV, where she calls out the American government for their poor reponse to Hurricane Maria that struck Puerto Rico, and for their gentrifying the island.
Pedro "Prieto" Acevedo
Olga's older brother. A recently-elected politician representing Brooklyn. He has plans to protect his beloved nehgbourhood, Sunset Park, from gentrification. Unfortunately, there are a couple of white developers who know a deep-dark secret of his, and are more than happy to expose this should he get in the way of their plans.
- The Beard: His wife, whom her married to keep up the facade of being a heterosexual man. This is not merely enough to change who he really is.
Blanca Acevedo
Olga and Prieto's mother. A radical activist and the leader of the Panuelos Negros, she fights to "free" Puerto Rico from the U.S.'s oppression—by any means necessary. Despite her absence, she stays in communique with her children by sending them harsh latters, and is also implied to be watching them from afar.
- Ambiguously Brown: Blanca's appearance isn't really described. In one of her letters she only mentions her curly hair as something she, and other Latinos, was made to feel ashamed of. Given that many of Puerto Ricans are of African descent, her curly hair might be indicative of being mixed Afro-Puerto Rican.
