Reading in Prison
1. At one-hour intervals the night guards paced past every room. Each time I heard the approaching footsteps, I jumped into bed and feigned sleep. And as soon as the guard passed, I got back…
Tag: Fidel Castro
Our Only Salvation Lies in Words: On Arenas’s Before Night Falls
All dictatorships are sexually repressive and anti-life. All affirmations of life are diametrically opposed to dogmatic regimes. It was logical for Fidel Castro to persecute us, not to let us fuck, and to try to…
The Future Belongs to South America
Jessie Sandova, From the Monastery to the World: The Letters of Thomas Merton and Ernesto Cardenal (Counterpoint Press, 2017) I had initial high hopes for reading the correspondence of Thomas Merton and Ernesto Cardenal. I started…
Fidel on Che
He had a gift for people. He was one of those people that everyone immediately cares about—it was his naturalness, his simplicity, his sense of comradeship and all his virtues. He was a doctor; he…
Focused
When I decided to really buckle down and study, I’d study fifteen or sixteen hours a day. I’d have breakfast, lunch, and dinner with a book in front of me, never taking my eyes off…
Fidel on Che
I view Che, furthermore, as a moral giant who grows day by day, whose image, whose strength, whose influence has multiplied throughout the world. How could he fit below a tombstone? How could he fit…
Jesuit Values
The Jesuits clearly influenced me with their strict organization, their discipline, and their values. [p. 118] I believe that Christ was a great revolutionary. That’s what I believe. His entire doctrine was devoted to the…