 | Cuba and the Fall: Christian Text and Queer Narrative in the Fiction of José Lezama Lima and Reinaldo Arenas Subjects: Gay men’s writings Cuban -- History and criticism; Homosexuality in literature; Fall of man in literature; Homosexuality -- Religious aspects -- Christianity; Homosexuality and literature -- Cuba -- History -- 20th century; Christianity and literature --; The literature of Cuba, argues Eduardo González in this new book, takes on quite different features depending on whether one is looking at it from "the inside" or from "the outside," a view that in turn is shaped by official political culture and the authors it sanctions or by those authors and artists who exist outside state policies and cultural politics. González approaches this issue by way of two twentieth-century writers who are central to the canon of gay homoerotic expression and sensibility in Cuban culture: José Lezama Lima (1910-1976) and Reinaldo Arenas (1943-1990). Drawing on the plots and characters in their works, González develops both a story line and a moral tale, revolving around the Christian belief in the fall from grace and the possibility of redemption, that bring the writers into a unique and revealing interaction with one another.
Eduardo González, Professor of Latin American Literature and Cinema at Johns Hopkins University, is the author of Cuba and the Tempest: Literature and Cinema in the Time of Diaspora and The Monstered Self: Narratives of Death and Performance in Latin American Fiction. |
