Symbols Anita de Monte Laughs Last Xóchitl González

The Silver Sequins Symbol: Identity and Defiance in Anita de Monte Laughs Last

Introduction

In Xóchitl González’s novel Anita de Monte Laughs Last, the silver sequin dress worn by the titular character on the night of her death becomes a potent symbol of her vibrant energy, defiant spirit, and the spectacle of her identity. More than just a garment, the dress encapsulates Anita’s refusal to be diminished, her art-star bravado, and the tragic erasure that follows her fall. This article traces the dress’s literal appearances, explores how its meaning shifts across the narrative, connects it to key characters and themes, and offers study questions to deepen understanding of this symbol’s role.

Literal Appearance and Recurrence

The silver sequin dress first appears in Chapter 2, where Anita wears it to a party at art dealer Tilly Barber’s loft. After learning of an upcoming solo show and seeing her husband Jack Martin with another woman, Anita transmutes anger into joy. She dances exuberantly with her friend Jomar, and the narrative emphasizes how “the silver sequins of her dress went flying” as she spins, creating a visual that all present remember after her death. The dress is literally a shiny, glamorous party garment—likely a short, fitted cocktail dress covered in iridescent sequins that catch the light. It is both a costume and an armor.

The dress resurfaces in Chapter 22, when Anita’s ghost watches her own retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art of the Americas. She laments that she cannot be there in person, and thinks: “I would have worn the dress with the silver paillettes.” Here the garment becomes a symbol of lost presence and the yearning to participate in her own celebration. Later, in Chapter 26, Anita’s ghost searches for her stored artworks, but the dress itself is not recovered; it remains a memory of her living self.

A parallel appears in Chapter 10, when Raquel Toro prepares for Campus Dance. Her friend Betsaida lends her a “silver lamé hourglass evening dress”—a shimmering, silver garment. Raquel considers wearing it but ultimately chooses a patterned Vivienne Tam dress given by her boyfriend Nick. The silver dress, in this context, represents a version of Raquel that would be “too loud, too flashy” and would not help her fit in with Nick’s wealthy parents. Raquel’s rejection of the silver dress mirrors Anita’s embrace of hers, highlighting the different stakes for each woman.

Meaning Changes

The silver sequin dress’s meaning evolves across the novel’s timeline.

  • Anita’s Living Defiance: In Chapter 2, the dress is a tool of performance. Anita uses it to command attention, reclaim power from Jack, and broadcast her success. The sequins “flying” suggest unrestrained freedom and a spirit that refuses containment. The dress is inseparable from her identity as an artist and a public figure.

  • Ghostly Longing: In death, the dress becomes an emblem of what Anita has lost. When she wishes for the silver paillettes at her retrospective, the dress signifies not just a garment but her agency to choose, to be seen, and to be alive. It is a painful reminder that her body and her art are no longer hers to control.

  • Raquel’s Rejection: For Raquel, the borrowed silver dress represents a performative identity she chooses not to adopt. By declining it, she prioritizes fitting into Nick’s world over expressing her own flashy Latine aesthetic. This decision underscores the theme of class and belonging: Raquel must navigate the tension between authenticity and social acceptance.

  • Legacy and Preservation: By the novel’s end, Anita’s art is recovered and celebrated, but the dress itself is never physically reclaimed. It remains a symbolic marker of the ephemeral moment of her life—the night she danced, laughed, and died. Its absence in the present suggests that the essence of Anita lives on through her work and the energy it carries, not through material objects.

Character and Theme Connections

Characters

  • Anita de Monte: The dress is central to her self-staging. She wears it to assert her presence against Jack’s attempts to shrink her. In her ghostly form, she still identifies with the garment, showing how deeply her public persona is tied to that night.
  • Raquel Toro: Raquel’s rejection of the silver dress for the Vivienne Tam illustrates her internal conflict between her own desires and the need to navigate elite spaces. The dress symbolizes a possible self that she sets aside.
  • Nick Fitzsimmons: By gifting Raquel a dress that will help her blend in, Nick—well-meaning but complicit—asks her to perform a version of herself that is palatable to his parents. The silver dress, in contrast, would have been Raquel’s own choice.
  • Betsaida: Betsaida lends the silver dress, representing a supportive but culturally distinct voice. Her advice (“stick to academics,” “wow them with your smarts”) reinforces the practical choices Raquel makes.

Themes

  • Erasure of Women Artists: Anita’s dress embodies her artistic vitality and the spectacle that the art world remembers. Yet after her death, her work is stored away and her memory nearly erased. The dress’s disappearance mirrors the systematic erasure of women artists from the canon, a theme introduced in the epigraph from Janson.
  • Class and Privilege: Raquel’s choice to forgo the silver dress highlights how class performance is required for survival in elite institutions. The dress’s flashiness would mark her as other; the Vivienne Tam, referencing Asian art, becomes a “conversation starter” that aligns her with Nick’s world.
  • Haunting and Legacy: Anita’s ghost remains attached to the dress as a symbol of her lost embodiment. Her inability to wear it in death underscores the gap between her vibrant legacy and her physical absence. The dress becomes a ghostly token that links the past to the present.
  • Identity and Belonging: Both Anita and Raquel use clothing to negotiate identity. Anita embraces the sequins as an assertion of her Cuban-American, artistic self. Raquel masks her background to belong. The silver dress motif shows how performance of identity can be both empowering and alienating.

Study Questions

1. How does the silver sequin dress function as a symbol of Anita’s defiance in Chapter 2, and what does its “flying” sequins suggest about her legacy?
Answer: In Chapter 2, Anita dances in the dress to reclaim her power after seeing Jack with another woman. The flying sequins create a spectacle that the party remembers, ensuring that even after her death, witnesses recall her laughing and spinning. The “molting bird” imagery implies that she sheds something of herself that night—possibly her old self or her mortal existence—while leaving a lasting impression that cannot be erased, much like her art later survives.

2. Compare Anita’s relationship with her silver dress to Raquel’s relationship with Betsaida’s silver lamé dress. What does each character’s choice reveal about their respective positions in the art world?
Answer: Anita owns her dress and wears it defiantly, asserting her place as an artist and a performer. Raquel borrows a similar silver dress but chooses not to wear it, opting instead for a dress that helps her fit in with Nick’s family. Anita, already a known figure, can afford to be flashy; Raquel, a scholarship student navigating privilege, must suppress her own style to gain acceptance. This contrast highlights how access and visibility in the art world are shaped by class, gender, and race.

3. In Chapter 22, Anita’s ghost wishes she could wear the silver paillettes dress to her retrospective. How does this desire connect to the theme of haunting and legacy?
Answer: Anita’s longing for the dress shows that even in death, she craves participation in her own recognition. The dress represents a moment when she was alive, powerful, and seen. Her inability to wear it at the retrospective reinforces her ghostly condition: she is present only through her art, not her body. The unfulfilled wish underscores the novel’s theme that an artist’s legacy is often incomplete without their physical presence, and that erasure can continue even after death.

4. How does the silver sequin dress relate to the novel’s criticism of the art world’s canon formation?
Answer: The epigraph quotes Janson defending the exclusion of non-Western artists. Anita, a Cuban-American woman, is marginalized both during her life and after. Her silver dress is a symbol of the spectacle that the art world briefly admires but then discards. The dress’s absence in the present (never physically recovered) mirrors how Anita’s work was stored and nearly forgotten. By placing this garment at the center of her most remembered night, the novel critiques how the art world consumes and then erases women artists of color, valuing their performance but not their long-term recognition.