Eminent Maricones by Jaime Manrique

 (University of Wisconsin Press, 1999)

 

I've had this book by my old friend Jaime Manrique on my shelf for many years, and I'm glad I finally got around to reading it.  The eminent maricones Jaime writes about (in separate essays ) are himself, Manuel Puig, Reinaldo Arenas,  Federico Garcia Lorca, and another man also named Jaime Manrique.

The book opens with a wonderful autobiographical essay about Jaime's childhood and adolescence in Columbia.  He was the illegitimate son of a wealthy man from an old and important Columbian family, but grew up in poverty with his mother and sister.  Jaime's portrait of Manuel Puig and his remembrance of Reinaldo Arenas are fresh and interesting, and do a nice job of revealing both Jaime and their subject.  His essay on Federico Garcia Lorca, which  focuses on Lorca's own homophobia and gradual liberation, is an important and clarifying piece of work. 

Eminent Maricones is a  engaging and exciting book.