Old Rosa - Softcover

Arenas, Reinaldo

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0802134068 ISBN 13: 9780802134066

Publisher: Grove Press, 1994

Synopsis

Reinaldo Arenas has been widely praised for his prodigious, explosive talent. A terrifying and beautiful novel, Old Rosa is composed of two stories that converge on a single charged point in the lives of a Cuban mother and son. In “Old Rosa,” we meet Rosa as a young woman, tall, proud, shrewd, always in control. But her world begins to crumble when her oldest son runs off to join Castro’s rebels and she finds her youngest son, her “brightest star,” in bed with another boy.

The second story, “The Brightest Star,” finds this youngest son in one of Castro’s camps for homosexuals, subjected to mind-numbing labor and unrelieved brutality. To survive, he writes’on paper bags and torn-off scraps of political posters, and in margins of stolen official documents. He writes to open a window of freedom, to preserve that dream of beauty and love, with such passion and soaring poetry that we can see the magnificent castles, the lush hanging gardens, the crystal palaces of his imagination”as they blossom and dissolve around the image of Old Rosa, their fateful confrontation, and the vision of her house in flames.

About this title

Language Notes

Text: English, Spanish (translation)

From Publishers Weekly

It's fascinating to observe the talented author's development in these two novellas, written five years apart. Arenas's emotionally charged, lyrical prose becomes firmer, more focused as he abandons magical realism and delves more intimately into his own experiences. The heroine of the allegorical "Old Rosa" is a peasant who amasses a large property through hard work and self-sacrifice only to see her efforts destroyed when her farm is collectivized under Castro. With her oldest son ready to join the revolution, her daughter marrying a Negro and her youngest son Arturo a homosexual, Rosa literally goes mad; the novella begins with her setting fire to her house and herself. Arturo's life is taken up in "The Brightest Star," which parallels some of what is known of the author's own experiences in the notorious Cuban workcamps. Arturo's personality changes when he is imprisoned for his homosexuality. At first he holds himself aloof, then becomes the most flamboyant of his fellow prisoners and finally retreats into a beautiful fantasyland. Because Arenas holds back nothing, giving free vent to his emotions, this densely charged tale crescendoes to a shattering finale.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Grove Press
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0802134068
• ISBN 13: 9780802134066
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 106