Encore! Elías Miguel Muñoz discusses new book in virtual discussion

Cuban-American author Elías Miguel Muñoz had the impulse to write from a young age. Born in the midst of the Cuban Revolution and faced with the pressures of machismo culture, Muñoz found writing to be an escape from reality. 

“Writing provided me a home where I could escape the abuse or fear of rejection,” Muñoz said in a discussion on Tuesday night, hosted virtually by the UNC Latina/o Studies Program.

He began writing everything from love poems to melodramas to stories based on his favorite movies and television programs. Most of Muñoz’s earliest works were lost when he and his family immigrated to the United States from Cuba. 

“We were not able to take anything with us when we left Cuba,” Muñoz said. “Just a suitcase, a couple of changes of clothes— but my grandmother, she hid one of my stories inside the lining of one of the suitcases so they couldn’t take it, they couldn’t see it. So, I have one story from those things that I go back to every now and then to remind me and to keep me humble.” 

Today, Muñoz has published poetry, plays and ten novels. He brought excerpts from his newest novel, “Encore! Encore!” to the discussion, where he read from and spoke about the novel as part of the UNC Latina/o Cultures Speakers Series. 

“Encore! Encore!” explores the male sex tourism industry in Santo Domingo in the 1980s. It follows two male sex workers, Luis and Richard, and their patrons, Paul and Antonio, as they navigate their aspirations and their realities. 

“It’s not just about that, of course,” Muñoz said. “In fact, the overarching theme for me, the one idea that guided my writing, was friendship. That’s probably the recurring theme in all of my work.”

He said during the Q&A part of the event that the friendship between Luis and Richard is the most important aspect of the novel. For him, friendship is the most beautiful relationship human beings can have.

Muñoz is just one of many authors that the Speakers Series, which will celebrate its 25th anniversary in 2024, has brought to UNC. 

The Speakers Series was started in the fall of 1999 by the founding director of the UNC Latina/o Studies Program, María DeGuzmán. 

“I readily understood that if we were really going to connect UNC-Chapel Hill to other places in the world, the best way to do it was to establish a speaker series,” DeGuzmán said. 

While DeGuzmán started the Speakers Series entirely on her own, over the past 25 years, it has become a group effort. Tuesday’s event, for instance, was coordinated in part by Ylce Irizarry. 

Although the event is put on by the Latina/o Studies Program, it does not exclusively cater to students within the program. The Speakers Series has been attended not only by a wide variety of people at UNC, but by people across the country. 

“We try to identify speakers who will bring something fresh and useful to the broader UNC campus,” Irizarry said. 

Both DeGuzmán and Irizarry emphasized the importance of cultural events, such as the Speakers Series, and the impact they can have on attendees. 

“I think college is a time to explore all kinds of culture and experiences outside of your immediate coursework and major,” Irizarry said. 

She said that events like these might relate to a student’s cultural life, or the cultural lives of their family or friends. She said that it can also deepen the knowledge of attendees who are already familiar with Latino culture.

The UNC Latina/o Cultures Speakers Series features scholars, creative writers, performance artists, educators and countless other creators. More information about the Speakers Series, which will continue in the spring semester, can be found here. 

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