Reinaldo Arenas describes his poverty-stricken rural childhood, his adolescence as a rebel fighting for Castro, and his life in revolutionary Cuba as a homosexual. Fleeing Cuban repression he lived in the US until he committed suicide at 47, unable to reconcile himself to life out of Cuba.

Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas describes his poverty-stricken childhood in rural , his adolescence as a rebel fighting for Fidel Castro, and his life in revolutionary Cuba as a homosexual. Very quickly the Castro government suppressed his writing and persecuted him for his homosexuality until he was finally imprisoned. Arenas eventually took flight from Cuba via the Mariel boat lift and settled in New York. Unable to really reconcile himself to life in America away from the beloved country of his birth, Arenas committed suicide in 1990 at the age of 47, already dying from AIDS.