by Reinaldo Arenas

Reinaldo Arenas was born on July 16, 1943, in the province of Oriente, Cuba. An illegitimate child in a fatherless household, Arenas was raised in a poor, rural town. He lived with his mother’s family, developing an intimate connection with his grandmother. After Fidel Castro’s rise to power in 1959 Arenas moved to Havana where he published his first novel, Celestino antes del alba (Singing from the Well), which won him both First Mention in the Cuban Writers and Artists Union literary contest and the distrust of the Revolutionary government on account of the novel’s irreverence and critical stance towards the regime. After years of political persecution for his beliefs and his homosexuality, Arenas left Cuba for the United States, where he recorded his autobiography on audiocassettes before committing suicide in 1990. (Arenas had actually started to write his memoir in Cuba...