¿Qué Posee de “Queer” la Autobiografía Areniana Antes que Anochezca?

Abstract

Even though Before Night Falls (1992) stands out for being the first Latin American autobiography that deals extensively with the homoerotic theme, there are two aspects in the research done about this work that appear to be discordant. While on one hand, there is an obvious resistance, by the critics of this work, to consider this autobiography queer; on the other, there are still recent publications which characterize this author’s homosexuality as illusive (illusory) or a “disguised or mistaken heterosexuality” (Vilaseca, 145). This is so even after considering the impact of studies from the early nineties, which intended to clarify the Latin American difference in conceptualization of what it means to be gay. For that reason, the purpose of this paper is to relate some of the queer theory premises to Before Night Falls’s objectives in order to understand the reason why this work has been excluded from what has been considered queer. Additionally, in order to dive into Latin American memoirs like Arenas’, from a perspective with queer tones, it is necessary to become aware of the unique aspects of this type of works, and because of it, in this paper there will be a review of the differences that separate and distinguish the autobiographies of gay hispanic writers from those of their Anglo or European counterparts. Finally, a probing of the premises of the queer parody will be done in order to find some possible reasons that could clarify so many unreasonable acts that distinguish this important Arenian work.