Eminent Maricones: Arenas, Lorca, Puig and Me (Living Out: Gay and Lesbian Autobiographies) Book

"Where Manrique's tale differs from others is in its unabashed and sensitive treatment of sexuality. One reads his autobiographical account with pleasure and fascination."-Jose Quiroga, George Washington University

"Manrique's voice is wise, brave, and wholly original. This chronicle of self- discovery and literary encounters is heartening and deep."-Kennedy Fraser

"In this charmingly indiscreet memoir, Jaime Manrique writes with his customary humor and warm sympathy, engaging our delighted interest on every page. He has the rare gift of invoking and inviting intimacy, in this case a triangulated intimacy between himself, his readers, and his memories. These are rich double portraits."-Phillip Lopate

Jaime Manrique, one of the leading Latino writers working today, offers a provocative autobiography interweaving his own story with the lives of three other gay Hispanic authors: the Argentine Manuel Puig; Reinaldo Arenas, originally from Cuba; and Spanish poet and playwright Federico Garca Lorca. The result is a poetic, moving memoir that has much to say about literature, sexuality, and Hispanic culture, as well as about four of contemporary literature's leading writers.

As one of those writers, Manrique chronicles his own intellectual and emotional journey to becoming an author. Through the account of his early years in Colombia, he provides a candid glimpse of what it means to grow up gay in Latin America. Other surprises abound-from revelations about the last days of Arenas and Puig, to new details about Lorca's emotional life.

Colombian-born writer Jaime Manrique interweaves his own life story with the lives of three other gay Hispanic writers: the Argentinian Manuel Puig, Cuban-born Reinaldo Arenas, and Spanish poet and playwright Federico Garcia Lorca. A friend of both Puig and Arenas, Manrique also draws on his interviews with friends of Lorca (who was killed in Spain in 1936) to provide warmly sympathetic portrait of men who lived and wrote from the perspective of exiles and outcasts, both for their sexuality and for their politics.