Becoming Reinaldo Arenas: Family, Sexuality, and the Cuban Revolution
by Jorge Olivares
Duke University Press
241 pages, $22.95
THE TITLE of the first chapter in Jorge Olivares’ study of Reinaldo Arenas—“I Scream, Therefore I Am”—is taken from Before Night Falls, which may be, for many North American readers, the only book by Arenas they know, or know of, because they’ve seen the 2000 film starring Javier Bardem. But in Becoming Reinaldo Arenas we also look at novels like The Ill-Fated Peregrinations of Fray Servando (El Mundo Alucinante), The Palace of the White Skunks (El Palacio de las blanquisimas mofetas), and The Color of Summer; the novella Voyage to Havana; and a short story called “El Cometa Halley” (“Halley’s Comet”), among many others.
