Diary of Fire by Elías Miguel Muñoz

Abstract

Reviewed by: Diary of Fire by Elías Miguel Muñoz Isabel Álvarez-Borland Muñoz, Elías Miguel. Diary of Fire. New Jersey: Tincture Lethe, 2016. Pp. 333. ISBN 978-1-59021-580-7. In Elías Miguel Muñoz latest book, Diary of Fire (2016), the narrator’s moving reflections structure a fictional diary that explores sexuality, childhood trauma, and family relationships. At the center of the memoir is the narrator’s deep desire to understand himself. This self-search however is deeply intertwined by the abuse the narrator suffered as a child and by his broken relationship with his father. Muñoz was born in Cuba in 1954, and emigrated with his parents to the United States when he was fourteen years old. Like many of his Cuban American writer peers who came over during adolescence, his writing shares a sensibility based on the division or rupture with a childhood that took place in a different language and in another geography. A sense of unresolved contradictions colors most of Muñoz’s previous works, a body of work that spans several genres: novel, poetry and literary criticism. With greater urgency, and now from the perspective of a writer in his early sixties, Muñoz’s Diary of Fire (2016) returns to the issues of self-understanding and to the individual’s need and right for living an authentic life. Diary of Fire fluctuates between past and present and between Cuba and the United States keeping the trauma of displacement and discovery of sexuality as important centers of the memoir. In so doing its speaks of the narrator, Camilo Macías, breaking away from his father’s homophobia, the scars of child abuse, and Camilo’s coming to terms with his sexual identity. Several chapters titled “Cuba in Silence” return to Camilo Macías and the traumatic events of his Cuban childhood. It is precisely the reader’s experience of witnessing both the present and the past of the narrative that adds significance to what is being read and renders poignancy as well as pathos to the events related. The prominent scar in this fictional diary is the abuse Camilo suffered in Cuba as a seven year-old child by a family friend, Eduardo, a thirty year-old man who lived near his home and who had won the confidence of his unsuspecting parents. It is those scenes that deal with molestation that seem to torture the narrator as he fights to erase them from his mind: “Memories brought anguish; they made him confront the horrors of what was done to him. Yet he kept reliving them, writing about them. “I write because I remember the pain,” he said. “And it’s still with me” (118). In fact, it is the frustrating memory of the sexual abuse that remains deep in Camilo’s unconscious and often reappears as the narrator tries to grapple and analyze what [End Page 498] exactly happened to him as a child. Camilo describes sordid instances of this abuse in a distanced tone that at times contrasts vividly with the horror of what is being related. Camilo’s child voice also recalls with grief the homophobia of his father and his verbal and sometimes physical abuse for suspecting the sexual preferences of his son. As a child, his spirit was broken by a father’s brutality and lack of approval. The family fits the Cuban stereotype, the father exudes machismo, the mother is pictured as understanding but unable to stop the father’s behavior. As someone betrayed by his country, the father is deeply hurt by historical circumstance and refuses to have any positive interactions with those around him. Sad scenes are narrated about how the father forbids Camilo to develop his artistic interests and how the child was forbidden to have friends who were not macho enough for his father. When the family decides to leave the island of Cuba as exiles, a time of loneliness and resentment against his father grows inside the child’s heart. The past lurks close as the Cuban memories of sexual prejudice and physical violence keep returning to Camilo’s mind. The present of the narrative relates...