Havana, through dirty lenses

Abstract

The author discusses Pedro Juan Gutierrez’s book Trilogia suja de Havana (Dirty trilogy of Havana), launched recently in Brazil by publisher Companhia das Letras. He talks about how the author pictures the city of Havana, its people, and his compatriots in passages where there is gross bias against women and black people. Composed by a strategy that claims to be, at the same time, autobiographical and fictional, it places the reader in a promiscuous, fetid and decadent Havana. The author also discusses how Pedro Juan Gutierrez subtracts reality from his book and turns it into literature for export, commercially convenient even to heat up the imagination of those who practice sexual tourism.