The author was a Cuban poet and novelist who was vocally anti-Castro. Arenas is born to an unmarried, teenaged mother from a large peasant family in the eastern province of Oriente in 1943. His grandmother and aunts raise him and he encounters his father only once. Arenas feels unloved by his mother, to whom he is a reminder of his father’s betrayal of his promise to marry her and who is unequipped to mother a child. Arenas spends a lot of time alone exploring the fields and jungle around his home and experiences loneliness at a young age.

Part of his feeling of alienation from his family and the people in his village stems from his sexuality: Arenas is gay in a culture prejudiced against gay people. Consequently, Arenas realizes he has to hide his sexuality to avoid bullying; this makes him feel alone in his suffering. He is overwhelmed by guilt after his first sexual encounter with a boy when he has sex with his cousin Orlando at the age of eight—Arenas thinks he has condemned himself for life. Arenas subsequently represses his sexuality and avoids sex with men until his late teens.

Arenas grows into a principled adult, priding himself on his moral and artistic integrity in a country increasingly corrupted in both regards.