Reinaldo Arenas Residence

History

Poet and novelist Reinaldo Arenas (1943-1990) was born into poverty in the countryside of the eastern province of Holguín in Cuba. He lived with his single mother and extended family. After moving to Havana in the early 1960s, Arenas took part in two writing competitions. He later learned that his submissions were criticized for their homoerotic and alleged counterrevolutionary passages. This led the poet to smuggle some of his work for publication outside of Cuba while the Cuban regime destroyed other manuscripts of his. At a time when the Castro regime considered homosexuality a “bourgeois perversion” and counterrevolutionary, these actions led to his eventual capture and imprisonment between December 1974 and January 1976. Arenas was coerced into signing a forced confession renouncing his “homosexual conducts” and admitting that he was a counterrevolutionary.

Arenas regarded the 1970s as the worst decade of his life due to ostracism, imprisonment, and homelessness. During the mass emigration of Cubans in 1980, Arenas successfully applied for an exit permit at a local police station where he would not be recognized as a censored writer.

Changing the last name on his passport from Arenas to Arinas, the writer left Cuba in early May 1980. After a teaching stint in Miami, Arenas moved to New York City in January 1981.

By this time, he had completed some of his most notable works, including Celestino antes del alba (1967), El mundo alucinante (1968 in France, 1969 in México; translated as The Ill-Fated Peregrinations of Fray Servando), and El palacio de las blanquísimas mofetas (1975 in France, 1977 in Germany, and 1980 in Venezuela; translated as The Palace of the White Skunks). The first and third books began a lifelong series titled Pentagonía, a collection of five novels recounted as semi-autobiographical versions of his life.

Arenas initially lived in a fourth-floor apartment at 333 West 43rd Street. Here, the poet rewrote manuscripts destroyed or seized by the Cuban government in the 1970s, such as Otra vez el mar (1982; translated as Farewell to the Sea), the third novel of his Pentagonía. He also revised already published works, such as Cantando en el pozo (1982; translated as Singing from the Well, published initially as Celestino antes del alba) and El mundo alucinante (1982 in Venezuela). Some of his new texts in this period included articles, stories, and poetry, such as his book collection Termina el desfile (1981; End of the Parade in English).

In 1983, the same year he received a Guggenheim Fellowship, he moved to a sixth-floor apartment at nearby 328 West 44th Street. Arenas continued writing novels, poetry, and story collections, such as El portero (1987; translated as The Doorman), La Loma del Ángel (1987; translated as Graveyard of the Angels), Viaje a La Habana (1990; Trip to Havana in English), and the fourth part of the Pentagonía, El color del verano (1991; translated as The Color of Summer). The poet also oversaw and reviewed the translation of most of his work in this period into French and English, revising some editions months before his death.

Friends of the writer described the apartment as small, full of stacked books, and with the front door full of locks for safety. Colombian novelist, colleague, and Hell’s Kitchen neighbor Jaime Manrique recalled:

By the winter of 1987, Arenas was diagnosed with AIDS. After several hospital visits, the writer was determined to complete his pending manuscripts, including his memoirs. In late 1990, Arenas sent various copies of his completed manuscripts to different colleagues: El asalto (The Assault), the final novel of Pentagonía; Lepresorio, a poetry collection; and Antes que anochezca (translated as Before Night Falls, published in Spanish in 1992 and in English in 1993, and the basis for an award-winning film of the same name in 2000), the memoirs that he dictated on over 20 cassettes over three years. Arenas died of an intentional overdose in his Hell’s Kitchen apartment in December 1990. Writer Ann Tashi Slater, who interviewed Arenas in 1983 and wrote about his legacy in a 2014 article in The Paris Review, called him, “One of the most talented and prolific writers to emerge during the [Cuban] revolution.” Illustrating the ongoing relevance of Before Night Falls, his best-known work in the United States, Slater notes that the autobiography is “as urgent and compelling as ever–a portrait of exile and longing, of the anguish and rage of the dispossessed.”

Entry by Andrés Santana-Miranda, project consultant (April 2025).

NOTE: Names above in bold indicate LGBT people.