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Reinaldo Arenas

Bio

Reinaldo Arenas was born in Cuba in 1943. In the 1970s, he was imprisoned multiple times for being gay, which clashed with the beliefs of the Communist regime. Despite the hardships imposed during his imprisonment, Arenas produced a significant body of work, including his Pentagonia, a set of five novels written between the 1960s and 1980s that comprise a "secret history" of post-revolutionary Cuba: Singing from the WellFarewell to the SeaPalace of the White SkunksColor of Summer, and The Assault. In 1980, he was one of 120,000 Cubans who arrived in the United States on the Mariel boatlift. Arenas, ill with AIDS, committed suicide in 1990 shortly after completing Before Night Falls. 

Reinaldo Arenas Books

Before Night Falls book cover

Before Night Falls

Reinaldo Arenas
Mona and Other Tales book cover

Mona and Other Tales

Reinaldo Arenas
The Color of Summer book cover

The Color of Summer

Reinaldo Arenas
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