Cuba and the Fall: Christian Text and Queer Narrative in the Fiction of Jose Lezama Lima and Reinaldo Arenas

Gonzalez (Latin American literature and cinema, Johns Hopkins U.) offers a comparative interpretation of literature written by well-known Cuban authors in relation to authors and film directors from abroad. The unifying theme is the notion that disobedience to God's command is the cause of human grief and proof of wickedness and severance from grace. Of the three Cuban writers he considers, Arenas (1943-90) and Virgilio Pinera (1912-79) were self-avowed homosexuals, and Lima's (1910-76) writing was consumed by the moral and theological consequences of male homosexual desire rendered in extravagant words and misdeeds. Among his topics are the lady in the hot seat, Paradiso as a five-star inferno, and gargling the tribe. Annotation c2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Eduardo Gonzalez, Professor of Latin American Literature and Cinema at Johns Hopkins University, is the author ofCuba and the Tempest: Literature and Cinema in the Time of Diaspora and The Monstered Self: Narratives of Death and Performance in Latin American Fiction.