Reinaldo Arenas

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Reinaldo Arenas
BornReinaldo Arenas Fuentes
July 16, 1943
Aguas Claras, Holguín Province, Cuba[2]
DiedDecember 7, 1990(1990-12-07) (aged 47)[2][3]
Hell's Kitchen, New York, United States
OccupationWriter
Period1966–1990
Genrepoetry, novel, drama
Notable worksPentagonia
Before Night Falls

Reinaldo Arenas (July 16, 1943 – December 7, 1990)

AIDS, committed suicide with an overdose of pills.[4]

Life

Arenas was born in the countryside of Newport Beach,

gay sex was with his cousin Orlando when he was aged eight and his cousin was 12. He says, "In the country, sexual energy generally overcomes all prejudice, repression, and punishment... Physical desire overpowers whatever feelings of machismo our fathers take upon themselves to instill in us."[5]

After moving to Holguín when he was a teen, Arenas got a job at a guava paste factory. When conditions in the city started to get worse, around 1958, he decided that he wanted to join the guerillas (Castro and his movement), by then he was 14. He walked to Velasco where he met Cuco Sánchez who took him to the Pro-Soviet Cuban guerrilla headquarters in the Sierra Gibara. A guerilla Commandante, Eddy Suñol, interviewed Arenas and then said, "We have plenty of guerrillas; what we need is weapons."[6] After ten days with them, he went back to Holguín with the intention of killing a guard and taking his weapon. When he made it back to the city, he went home to see his grandparents who were not so happy to see him. Because he made the mistake of leaving a note saying he was going to join the guerillas, the women that lived with his grandparents spread the news like wildfire. Fulgencio Batista's secret police, the Bureau for the Repression of Communist Activities, were on the lookout for him. His brief trip home made him realize he could not stay, so he trekked back to Velasco to the rebel encampment. They had to accept him at that point.[6]

When he was 16, he was awarded a scholarship at La Pantoja, the Batista military camp that had been converted into a

Blas Roca. Arenas graduated as an agricultural accountant, but later described his schooling as "communist indoctrination".[citation needed
]

The first time Arenas was in Havana was in 1960. He returned later when he enrolled in a planning course at the

concentration camps for LGBT people, Christians, and suspected members of the Cuban dissident movement. A relationship with a man named Miguel, who was later arrested and taken to a UMAP, was the beginning of Arenas' life of being known as a gay man by the Cuban Committees for the Defense of the Revolution
.

Throughout his life, Arenas became friends with and had relationships with many gay men. Even going so far to say that at one point, he had had sex with at least 5,000 men.[6] He watched as various friends and acquaintances pledged their allegiance to the regime in exchange for safety. They became informers for the government and reported other men, oftentimes friends and/or people they had relationships with in the past. The intention was to find gay and bisexual men and either prosecute and jail them or turn them into informers too. The reward for cooperating with the regime was your life. In order to become an informer, though, it often meant participating in Acts of repudiation denouncing their anti-regime beliefs or their homosexuality publicly – a very humiliating act.

Arenas watched this happen with Herberto Padilla. He had written a book that was critical of the

counterrevolutionary attitudes. Those he named were forced to go to the microphone and accept blame for their actions and say that they were traitors too. [citation needed
]

In 1963, he moved to

UNEAC
(National Union of Cuban Writers and Artists).

His El mundo alucinante (This Hallucinatory World, published in the U.S. as The Ill-Fated Peregrinations of Fray Servando) was awarded "first Honorable Mention" in 1966. Although, as the judges could find no better entry and they refused to award it to Arenas, no First Prize was awarded that year. His writings and openly gay life were, by 1967, bringing him into conflict with the communist government. He left the Biblioteca Nacional and became an editor for the Cuban Book Institute until 1968. From 1968 to 1974, he was a journalist and editor for the literary magazine La Gaceta de Cuba.

In 1974, he was sent to prison after being charged and convicted of "ideological deviation" and for publishing abroad without official consent.

El Morro Castle alongside murderers and rapists.[6] He survived by helping the inmates to write letters to wives and lovers. He was able to collect enough paper this way to continue his writing. However, his attempts to smuggle his work out of prison were discovered and he was severely punished. Threatened with death, he was forced to renounce his work and was released in 1976.[3][8]
In 1980, as part of the
Mariel Boatlift, he fled to the United States.[9]
He came on the boat San Lázaro captained by Cuban émigré Roberto Agüero.

Death

In 1987, Arenas was diagnosed with

AIDS;[1] he continued to write and speak out against the Cuban government. He mentored many Cuban exile writers, including John O'Donnell-Rosales. After battling AIDS, Arenas died of an intentional overdose of drugs and alcohol on December 7, 1990, in New York City.[4][2] In a suicide letter written for publication, Arenas wrote:

Due to my delicate state of health and to the terrible depression that causes me not to be able to continue writing and struggling for the freedom of Cuba, I am ending my life ... I want to encourage the Cuban people abroad as well as on the Island to continue fighting for freedom. ... Cuba will be free. I already am.[1][10]

In 2012, Arenas was inducted into the Legacy Walk, an outdoor public display which celebrates LGBT history and people.[11]

Writings

Despite his short life and the hardships imposed during his imprisonment, Arenas produced a significant body of work. In addition to significant poetic efforts ("El Central", "Leprosorio"), his

Rabelaisian Color of Summer, and The Assault. In these novels Arenas' style ranges from a stark realist narrative and high modernist experimental prose to absurd, satiric humor. His second novel, Hallucinations ("El Mundo Alucinante"), rewrites the story of the colonial dissident priest Fray Servando Teresa de Mier
.

In interviews, his autobiography, and in some of his fiction work itself, Arenas draws explicit connections between his own life experience and the identities and fates of his protagonists. As is evident and as critics such as Francisco Soto have pointed out, the "child narrator" in "Celestino", Fortunato of "The Palace...", Hector of "Farewell..", and the triply named "Gabriel/Reinaldo/Gloomy Skunk" character in "Color" appear to live progressive stages of a continuous life story that is also linked to Arenas's own.[12] In turn, Arenas consistently links his individual narrated life to the historical experience of a generation of Cubans. A constant theme in his novels and other writing is the condemnation of the Castro government, although Arenas also critiques the Catholic Church, US culture and politics. He also critiques a series of literary personalities in Havana and internationally, particularly those who he believed had betrayed him and suppressed his work (Severo Sarduy and Ángel Rama are notable examples). His "Thirty truculent tongue-twisters", which he claims circulated in Havana and which are reprinted in "The Color of Summer", mock everyone from personal friends who he suggests may have spied on him to figures such as Nicolás Guillén, Alejo Carpentier, Miguel Barnet, Sarduy and of course Castro himself.

His autobiography,

Wes Mason
singing the role of Arenas.

The Reinaldo Arenas Papers are held at Princeton University Library. "The collection consists of personal and working papers of Reinaldo Arenas" and includes typescript and typescript drafts, essays, interviews, newspaper clippings, correspondence and other documents.[13]

Notable works

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g Ann Tashi Slater (December 5, 2013). "The Literature of Uprootedness: An Interview with Reinaldo Arenas". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on January 6, 2015. Retrieved December 11, 2021.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g McDowell, Edwin (December 9, 1990). "Reinaldo Arenas, 47, Writer Who Fled Cuba, Dies". The New York Times. Archived from the original on August 31, 2009. Retrieved December 11, 2021.
  3. ^ a b c O'Boyle, Brendan (December 7, 2016). "Why Reinaldo Arenas Still Matters for Cuba's LGBT Community". America's Quarterly. Archived from the original on July 28, 2020. Retrieved December 11, 2021.
  4. ^ a b Manrique, Jaime (November 7, 1993). "Last Days of Reinaldo Arenas". The Washington Post. Retrieved August 14, 2023.
  5. ^ Guillermo Abel Severiche (2016). The Politics of Sensations: Body and Texture in Contemporary Cinema and Literature (Argentina - Cuba - Ireland) (Thesis). Louisiana State University. Archived from the original on December 12, 2021. Retrieved December 11, 2021.
  6. ^ a b c d Zvomuya, Percy (October 22, 2020). "'Before Night Falls': Reinaldo Arenas breaks down (in) Fidel Castro's Cuba". Mail & Guardian. Archived from the original on October 24, 2020. Retrieved December 11, 2021.
  7. ^ "Reinaldo Arenas". Cuba Center. Archived from the original on February 15, 2006. Retrieved December 11, 2021.
  8. ^ "Reinaldo Arenas". The Knitting Circle: Literature. Archived from the original on June 27, 2004. Retrieved August 11, 2021.
  9. ^ "Reinaldo Arenas Papers". Princeton Libraries. Archived from the original on May 12, 2008. Retrieved August 11, 2021.
  10. Montclair University. Archived from the original
    on July 20, 2011.
  11. ^ "2012 Inductees". Archived from the original on June 14, 2012. Retrieved August 11, 2021.
  12. ISBN 0805745548
    .
  13. ^ "Reinaldo Arenas Papers". Princeton University Library. Archived from the original on May 12, 2023. Retrieved December 11, 2021.

Further reading

English

  • Reinaldo Arenas (Twayne's World Author Series) / Francisco Soto, 1998
  • Reinaldo Arenas: The Pentagonía / Francisco Soto. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1994
  • The postmodern poetic narrative of Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas / Ileana C Zéndegui, 2004
  • The manufacture of an author: Reinaldo Arenas's literary world, his readers and other contemporaries / Claudio Canaparo, 2000
  • Reinaldo Arenas: tradition and singularity / Francisco Soto, 1988
  • Reinaldo Arenas: the agony is the ecstasy / Dinora Caridad Cardoso, 1997
  • Cosmopolitanisms and Latin America: Against the Destiny of Place / Jacqueline Loss. NY: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005 [A detailed study of Reinaldo Arenas and Diamela Eltit's cosmopolitan aspects]
  • "Lifewriting with a Vengeance: Truth, Subalternity and Autobiographical Determination in Reinaldo Arenas's Antes que anochezca," By: Sandro R. Barros, Caribe: Revista de Cultura y Literatura, 2006 Summer; 9 (1): 41–56.
  • "A
    Postmodern
    'Play' on a Nineteenth-Century Cuban Classic: Reinaldo Arenas's La Loma del Angel," By: H. J. Manzari, Decimonónica: Journal of Nineteenth Century Hispanic Cultural Production, 2006 Summer; 3 (2): 45–58.
  • "The Molecular Poetics of Before Night Falls," By: Teresa Rizzo, Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge, 2006 Spring; 11–12.
  • "Queer Parody and
    Postmodern
    Reading of Reinaldo Arenas's El cometa Halley," By: Francisco Soto, IN: Ingenschay, Desde aceras opuestas: Literatura/cultura gay y lesbiana en Latinoamérica. Madrid, Spain; Frankfurt, Germany: Iberoamericana; Vervuert; 2006. pp. 245–53
  • "Revisiting the Circuitous Odyssey of the
    Picaresque
    Novel: Reinaldo Arenas's El mundo alucinante," By: Angela L. Willis, Comparative Literature, 2005 Winter; 57 (1): 61–83.
  • "The Traumas of Unbelonging: Reinaldo Arenas's Recuperations of Cuba," By: Laurie Vickroy, MELUS: The Journal of the Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States, 2005 Winter; 30 (4): 109–28.
  • "Difficult Writings: AIDS and the Activist Aesthetic in Reinaldo Arenas' Before Night Falls," By: Diana Davidson, Atenea, 2003 December; 23 (2): 53–71.

Spanish

  • Reinaldo Arenas : una apreciación política / Adolfo Cacheiro, 2000
  • Reinaldo Arenas : recuerdo y presencia / Reinaldo Sánchez, 1994
  • La escritura de la memoria : Reinaldo Arenas, textos, estudios y documentación / Ottmar Ette, 1992
  • Reinaldo Arenas : narrativa de transgresión / Perla Rozencvaig, 1986
  • La alucinación y los recursos literarios en las novelas de Reinaldo Arenas / Félix Lugo Nazario, 1995
  • El círculo del exilio y la enajenación en la obra de Reinaldo Arenas / María Luisa Negrín, 2000
  • La textualidad de Reinaldo Arenas : juegos de la escritura posmoderna / Eduardo C Bejar, 1987
  • Reinaldo Arenas : alucinaciones, fantasía y realidad / Julio E Hernández-Miyares, 1990
  • El desamparado humor de Reinaldo Arenas / Roberto Valero, 1991
  • Ideología y subversión : otra vez Arenas / Reinaldo Sánchez, 1999

External links

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