Cuba's Political and Sexual Outlaw: Reinaldo Arenas [Hardcover]

Rafael Ocasio (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 26, 2003 | ISBN-10: 0813026725 | ISBN-13: 978-0813026725 | Edition: 1st

"Ocasio's book, meticulously researched and carefully argued, is a groundbreaking study that will be a most welcome addition to the growing scholarship on Arenas. Its greatest strengths, the exhaustive investigation of archives and the focus on Arenas's difficult negotiations with his social and political milieu, will make this book a must-read for scholars in the field of Latin American and Caribbean studies."--Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert, Vassar College

This detailed biographical account of Reinaldo Arenas's open opposition to Cuba’s revolutionary institutions reveals the price that the well-known Cuban dissident--one of the first out-of-the-closet gay writers from Latin America--paid in his quest for political, sexual, and literary freedom.

Arenas was a semiliterate peasant in Havana in 1962 when, at age 22, he began a promising literary career. His autobiographical fiction boldly explored strong homoerotic themes, and he was forced to smuggle his work out of the country for publication abroad.  Rafael Ocasio presents Arenas as an ideological political outlaw and a vocal sexual dissident, tracing the key political incidents that led Arenas into confrontation with official policies about proper revolutionary behavior. Ocasio examines eyewitness accounts--appearing here for the first time in book form--of work camps founded in the mid-sixties for the internment of social deviants, homosexuals, and religious practitioners, exposing the extent of government persecution of writers in revolutionary Cuba.

Using interviews with Arenas, critical reviews published both within Cuba and abroad of his work, and memoirs and recollections of Arenas's publishers, friends, and even rivals, Ocasio examines all major periods of Arenas's literary life, focusing especially on the years he lived in Havana. He corroborates Arenas's own version of his arrest by police entrapment in 1973, his flight from the courts, his imprisonment in El Morro penitentiary, and his escape from Cuba to Miami on the 1980 Mariel boatlift.
 

With his historical overview of the Cuban Revolution's systematic campaigns against homosexuality and his examination of previously unpublished material from Arenas's correspondence in the Princeton University collection, Ocasio presents a compelling biography of a counterrevolutionary activist and writer of international importance.

Rafael Ocasio, Professor of Spanish at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia, is the author of more than 20 articles on Latin American literature.

Editorial Reviews

Book Description

"Ocasio's book, meticulously researched and carefully argued, is a groundbreaking study that will be a most welcome addition to the growing scholarship on Arenas. Its greatest strengths, the exhaustive investigation of archives and the focus on Arenas's difficult negotiations with his social and political milieu, will make this book a must-read for scholars in the field of Latin American and Caribbean studies."--Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert, Vassar College

This detailed biographical account of Reinaldo Arenas's open opposition to Cuba’s revolutionary institutions reveals the price that the well-known Cuban dissident--one of the first out-of-the-closet gay writers from Latin America--paid in his quest for political, sexual, and literary freedom.

Arenas was a semiliterate peasant in Havana in 1962 when, at age 22, he began a promising literary career. His autobiographical fiction boldly explored strong homoerotic themes, and he was forced to smuggle his work out of the country for publication abroad.  Rafael Ocasio presents Arenas as an ideological political outlaw and a vocal sexual dissident, tracing the key political incidents that led Arenas into confrontation with official policies about proper revolutionary behavior. Ocasio examines eyewitness accounts--appearing here for the first time in book form--of work camps founded in the mid-sixties for the internment of social deviants, homosexuals, and religious practitioners, exposing the extent of government persecution of writers in revolutionary Cuba.

Using interviews with Arenas, critical reviews published both within Cuba and abroad of his work, and memoirs and recollections of Arenas's publishers, friends, and even rivals, Ocasio examines all major periods of Arenas's literary life, focusing especially on the years he lived in Havana. He corroborates Arenas's own version of his arrest by police entrapment in 1973, his flight from the courts, his imprisonment in El Morro penitentiary, and his escape from Cuba to Miami on the 1980 Mariel boatlift.
 

With his historical overview of the Cuban Revolution's systematic campaigns against homosexuality and his examination of previously unpublished material from Arenas's correspondence in the Princeton University collection, Ocasio presents a compelling biography of a counterrevolutionary activist and writer of international importance.

Rafael Ocasio, Professor of Spanish at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia, is the author of more than 20 articles on Latin American literature.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 200 pages
• Publisher: University Press of Florida; 1st edition (November 26, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813026725
• ISBN-13: 978-0813026725
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,461,155 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Rafael Ocasio
Charles A. Dana professor of Spanish

Academic Degrees
B.A., University of Puerto Rico
M.A., Eastern New Mexico University
Ph.D., University of Kentucky

Teaching Interests: The literature and culture of Cuba

Scholarly Interests: Afro-Cuban and revolutionary Cuban children's literatures

Publications:

"Cuba's Political and Sexual Outlaw: Reinaldo Arenas: (University Press of Florida, 2003)

"Latin American Culture and Literature" (Greenwood Press, 2004)

"A Gay Cuban Activist in Exile: Reinaldo Arenas" (University Press of Florida, 2007)

Contact Information:
E-mail: [e-mail]
Phone: [phone]

Biographical Information:
Ocasio is a Latin Americanist and a specialist in revolutionary Cuban literature. His book, Cuba's Political and Sexual Outlaw: Reinaldo Arenas (University Press of Florida, 2003), examines the life and work of Arenas under the stringent censorship that he suffered in Cuba, in part because of his open homosexuality. His book, Latin American Culture and Literature (Greenwood Press, 2004), offers a historical and critical view of the development of key literary movements in Latin America from the Conquest to contemporary authors of international fame. Gay Cuban Activist in Exile: Reinaldo Arenas examines Arenas's prolific writing (fiction and critical articles) published in the United States and focuses on his well-known role as "Latin America's first out-of-the-closet gay writer."

Other areas of his published research are Afro-Cuban and revolutionary Cuban children's literatures, and reflections of Santer'a, the Afro-Cuban religious belief, in mainstream revolutionary Cuban literature. He has also done extensive research on the Puertorrique'a novelist and poet Judith Ortiz Cofer, an important contemporary Latina writer.