Gay Cuban Nation

Rating:
Summary: A splendid introduction to homosexuality in Cuban literature
Review: Emilio Bejel's sensible analyses of Cuban fiction (on page and screen) shows that the project of Cuban nationalism from the last years of Spanish colonial rule to the middle years of Soviet neocolonialism was tightly interwoven with anxiety about weak, effeminate males and assertive, masculine women.In addition to well-known works such as Reinaldo Arenas's memoir _Before Night Falls_, José Lezama Lima's hallucinatory novel _Paradiso_, and the movie "Strawberry and Chocolate," Bejel discusses some less known earlier Cuban writing and more recent Cuban-American writing with characters who engage in homosexuality.

There is little in the way of comparison to nationalism in other places in this book and some surprising exclusions (especially Arenas's fiction and that of Virglio Piñera, now the martyred saint of younger gay Cuban writers). What Bejel has to say about the set of texts he discusses is almost always insightful, particularly about nuances of class differences and the long-running demonization of cities (paralleling the Jeffersonian tradition in the US). I am not convinced that some of the texts about which he writes (with the exception of "Strawberry and chocolate") reflect or have shaped Cuban nation-building (even in the sense of developing an "imagined community"). In addition to some doubts about the salience of some of the examples he selected I would have found more about the reception (especially any incorporation into standard Cuban school curricula) useful. Nonetheless, this is an outstanding and insight-filled reflection on homosexuality, homophobia, literature, and nation-building in Cuba from 1889 to 1997.