Short story
Strawberry and Chocolate
El lobo, el bosque y el hombre nuevo
Senel Paz · 1990
Synopsis
In Havana, David, a student from the countryside and a convinced young communist, is approached at the Coppelia ice-cream parlour by Diego, a cultured, religious and homosexual man who carries forbidden books under his arm. Torn between his revolutionary conscience and the lure of this proscribed culture, David lets himself be guided by Diego, who lends him books, talks to him about ballet and introduces him to the work of Lezama Lima, up to a lunch that reproduces a chapter of Paradiso. David himself recounts, in hindsight, this unexpected friendship.
Context
Awarded the Juan Rulfo Prize, then given by Radio France Internationale, the story appeared in 1991 in Mexico, from Era. It tackles head-on the discrimination suffered by homosexuals in Cuba in the sixties and seventies, and has been read as a political reflection on the island at the beginning of the nineties; some critics even regarded it as the first postmodern work written in Cuba. Paz himself adapted it for the film Strawberry and Chocolate, by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and Juan Carlos Tabío, nominated for an Oscar, then for the theatre. Peter Bush translated it into English in 1995.
Who it is for
For a brief and generous story about an unlikely friendship, in the Cuba of revolutionary certainties.
Prizes and reception
Honoured by an international jury, it has been performed more than five hundred times in Cuba by the Blanco y Negro company.