Jaime Manrique (born June 16, 1949)

[reviews_and_ramblings]

Jaime Manrique (born 16 June 1949) is a Colombian American author, poet, and journalist.

Manrique was born in Barranquilla, Colombia and earned a B.A. from the University of South Florida.

His first poetry volume won Colombia's National Poetry Award. Additionally, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship to write his memoirs and has contributed to Shade (1996), a gay, black fiction anthology. He has also produced the non-fictional book, Eminent Maricones which explores the works of Reinaldo Arenas, Manuel Puig, and Federico García Lorca. In 1999 he was awarded a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award.

He has taught creative writing at Mount Holyoke College, New York University, and The New School for Social Research. He is currently a professor in the M.F.A. program at Columbia University.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaime_Manrique


Jaime Manrique, 1992, by Robert Giard (http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/dl_crosscollex/brbldl_getrec.asp?fld=img&id=1121526)

American photographer Robert Giard is renowned for his portraits of American poets and writers; his particular focus was on gay and lesbian writers. Some of his photographs of the American gay and lesbian literary community appear in his groundbreaking book Particular Voices: Portraits of Gay and Lesbian Writers, published by MIT Press in 1997. Giard’s stated mission was to define the literary history and cultural identity of gays and lesbians for the mainstream of American society, which perceived them as disparate, marginal individuals possessing neither. In all, he photographed more than 600 writers. (http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/digitallibrary/giard.html)

Further Readings:

Eminent Maricones: Arenas, Lorca, Puig, and Me (Living Out: Gay and Lesbian Autobiog) by Jaime Manrique
Hardcover: 128 pages
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press; 1 edition (April 19, 1999)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0299161803
ISBN-13: 978-0299161804
Amazon: Eminent Maricones: Arenas, Lorca, Puig, and Me

Jaime Manrique weaves into his own memoir the lives of three important twentieth-century Hispanic writers: the Argentine Manuel Puig, author of Kiss of the Spider Woman; the Cuban Reinaldo Arenas, author of Before Night Falls; and Spanish poet and playwright Federico García Lorca. Manrique celebrates the lives of these heroic writers who were made outcasts for both their homosexuality and their politics.

"Manrique's double vision yields insights into Puig, Arenas, and Lorca unavailable to a writer less attuned to the complex interplay of culture and sexuality, as well as that of race and class in Latino and Anglo societies."—George DeStefano, The Nation

"A splendid memoir of Manuel Puig. It evokes him—how he really was—better than anything I've read."—Susan Sontag

"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

More Particular Voices at my website: http://www.elisarolle.com/, My Ramblings/Particular Voices