This is the shocking memoir by visionary Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas, giving an account of his life as a writer and a homosexual and his struggle for freedom of expression. He describes his poverty-stricken childhood in rural Cuba and his adolescence as a rebel fighting for Castro, his suppression as a writer, imprisonment as a homosexual, and his flight from Cuba via the Mariel boat lift. He never really reconciled himself to life in America away from the beloved country of his birth, and committed suicide in 1990 at the age of 47, already dying from Aids.