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Reinaldo Arenas: The Pentagonía Francisco Soto. Reinaldo Arenas: The Pentagonía. Gainesville: UP of Florida, 1994. 193 pp.
Francisco Soto's monograph is the first book-length study of Reinaldo Arenas to be published in English. Thus, English readers at last have access to more complete information about this important writer, who was born in rural Cuba in 1943 and died of AIDS in New York in 1990. Arenas wrote a total of eleven novels; the eponymous pentagonía (quintet) includes five of these which, in their entirety, were described by Arenas as "both a writer's autobiography and a metaphor of Cuban history." The five titles of the pentagonía are Singing from the Well, The Palace of the White Skunks, Farewell to the Sea, The Color of Summer, and The Assault. Soto has divided his book into an introduction, eight chapters, and an interview he held with Arenas in 1987.
In his introduction, Soto chronicles Arenas's life, including his childhood poverty, his participation in Castro's revolution and, subsequently, his treatment by Cuban officials as a nonperson because of his political nonconformity and his homosexuality. Unable to publish his works in Cuba...