The characters may be essential, but few have a distinct identity beyond being merely identified as Portuguese. Even canonical writers such as Hawthorne, London, Melville, Twain and Wharton may tend t
Arenas’s first work set in the United States breaks new ground with the story of a young Cuban refugee who becomes a doorman at a luxury apartment building. Oddly alienated from the tenants, he
His mother talks piously of the heaven that awaits the good, and disciplines him with an ox prod. His grandmother burns his precious crosses for kindling. His cousins meet to plot their grandfather's
