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Reinaldo Arenas was born in Cuba in 1943, in the eastern part of Oriente. He was an only child and loved to explore around his parent’s farm. After a long time, he applied to a job at a library, and that allowed him to start to write. Then, he wrote his first book, “Celestino Antes del Alba”(Singing from the Well), which won the second place prize in 1965 and it was published in 1967. And the only book that he was able to publish to Cuba was “El Mundo Alucinante” (The Ill-Fated Peregrinations of Fray Servando), which was smuggled out of Cuba and published in France in 1968, and during all of that a collection of short stories called “Con los Ojos Cerrados” was published in Uruguay in 1972. And when people found out about his homosexuality, how he wrote counter revolutionary things, and how he published writing, he was put into prison for 2 very unpleasant years. He was released in 1976 and escaped to Miami in 1980. After being unhappy in Miami for many months, he moved to New York. There, he continued writing his semi-autobiography called “Pentagonìa”. In 1987, he was diagnosed with AIDS. He hurried to finish “Pentagonìa” and was trying to get “Before Night Falls” on cassette tapes. In December of 1990, when he was about to die, he committed suicide. He wrote a letter to be sent to his friends and the newspaper saying. “I end my life voluntarily because I cannot continue working…I do not want to convey to you a message of defeat but of continued struggle and of hope. Cuba will be free. I already am.” Then “Before Night Falls” was named one of the Times’ best books of 1993. He is still remembered for his bravery for publishing all of the books, telling about his sexuality and what he went through in Cuba and America.
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Mike Royko was born on September 19, 1932 into a tavern-owning family in a rough Polish neighborhood in the northwestern part of Chicago and he became one of the most famous political and social commentators in American history. He became famous for many things that he has done in the past, but it mainly has to do with how dedicated to his work. During his four-decade career, he has written more than seven thousand fifty columns and of them were “That’s outrageous!” columns for Reader’s Digest. He sadly died at 64 on April 29, 1997. When he died, he wrote “If someone says, ‘What was Chicago like in the last half of the 20th century?’ you’d say read Royko. He captured the city like no one else has ever captured a city and Chicago was his metaphor for the rest of the country." He changed how everyone thinks of things in his many important writings, even what we thought about sexualities.
Anita Bryant and her Save Our Children Inc. are doing the 20 million lesbians and gay men in America an enormous favor: They are focusing for the public the nature of the prejudice and discrimination we face. The Dade County vote was one of the earliest events to spark a popular conversation on LGBT non-discrimination, elevating the conversation to a national level like never before and also preceding several other ballot fights that resulted in losses for the LGBT community.While there were many losses for the Lgbtq community, it also brought the issues of discrimination into the spotlight, which did cause some positive changes. Anita Bryant’s campaign forced people to start thinking about LGBTQ rights, and while it did cause a lot of discriminating laws, it also brought about some more positive changes later on, such as many anti-discrimination laws passed within the last 10 years.
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