Diary of Fire by Elías Miguel Muñoz (review)

In his most recent novel, Diary of Fire, Elías Miguel Muñoz tells the story of Camilo Macías, a graduate student and professor of Spanish who later decides to leave academia in order to focus on his creative writing. Beginning with a fire which the narrator is not yet prepared to discuss, the story recounts various memories of Camilo's life through letters, diary entries, descriptions of photographs, and excerpts of his novel, Cuba in Silence. By piecing together these stories, which are divided into five sections, Camilo seemingly seeks to discover himself. Through vignettes on love, loss, and survival, Diary of Fire chronicles Camilo's search for identity. Beginning during his days in graduate school and ending with the realization that he has lost the home he shared with his wife and daughter to fire, we follow Camilo's journey of self-discovery.

It is impossible to read this novel without considering the autobiographical nature of it. Within the novel, as Camilo writes his own book, we see how much of himself he puts into the story. In Camilo's case, he does not even change the names of many of his characters and openly admits (at least to the readers) that this is his story and he feels that he must tell it. But Muñoz also seemingly inserts aspects of his own life story into the novel as well. Early on, I struggled to separate the narrator (Macías) from the author (Muñoz), continuously reminding myself that this was a work of fiction and that while the novel itself was told as a memoir, it did not mean that it was the author's memoir. However, after reading Muñoz's biography page on his website (www.eliasmiguelmunoz.com/bio), it was apparent that my thought process was justified.

Among the many identical parallels that exist between Muñoz's life and Camilo's story, we see that both the author and his character left Cuba in 1969 and moved with their parents to Los Angeles instead of Miami. Both earned their PhD in Latin American literature, wrote their dissertations about Manuel Puig, and began their teaching careers in Kansas. Muñoz, similar to his protagonist, felt suffocated by academia and wanted to focus on his creative writing instead, choosing to leave teaching and return to California to write. While these parallels may seem broad, it does raise the question of how much more of Camilo's story is also Muñoz's story. While this does not hinder one's enjoyment of the story being told, it did linger in the back of my mind as I read it, and in fact, furthered my consideration of the major theme of the novel—one's search for identity.

Diary of Fire explores issues related to cultural, sexual, and individual identity. Camilo's journey evokes memories of his childhood in Cuba, as well as those created in the United States, and how that reflects who he is now. Throughout his exploration of self-identity, Camilo finds that he really does not fit anywhere—he is not Cuban enough, he is not American enough, and, not being from Miami, he's not even the right kind of Cuban American. And according to his friends, he is neither gay nor straight enough. In the story, Camilo identifies as bisexual, but even that identity marker is met with questions and doubt by many other characters. Just as his cultural identity is simultaneously both and neither, so too is his sexual identity. Even as he settles down and starts a family, Camilo struggles with his identity as a parent—his substantial involvement in raising his daughter leaves him feeling ostracized from the other fathers and mothers in the community who do not see him as fitting the "proper" parental mold.

Diary of Fire reflects a journey of self-discovery for its protagonist (and perhaps its author?). The novel suggests that it is the individual identity that...