Cuestiones de identidad, ficcio?n y verosimilitud en la autobiografi?a latinoamericana Antes que anochezca y La ciudad y los perros /

by 1973- Diaz Reategui, Karen

Reinaldo Arenas and Mario Vargas Llosa are two Latin American writers that found a very engaging way to reflect their life experiences in their literature: Arenas showing his gay sensibility through Autobiography, and Vargas Llosa throwing his personal demons as Fictional Autobiography. “¿Fiction or reality?” seems to be the dilemma. Both writers highlight the importance of life narrative in the history of a country, and a generation. It is also imperative to emphasize the formation of identity and gender roles that these two important books, Antes que anochezca and La ciudad y los perros , establish and describe. They give us a light in the interpretation of our history, not as a faithful reconstruction of the past, but as a “tale” in which memory and imagination are interacting too, helping us to understand really and truly, the meaning of growing and living under an oppressive system in Latin America .