Camila Sosa Villada
Camila Sosa Villada
Camila Sosa Villada is an Argentine transgender writer; as well as a stage, screen, and television actor. Sosa Villada was born in the province of Cordoba, located to the northwest of Buenos Aires in 1982. She was a sex worker at one time. Sosa Villada’s writing career began in 2015 with the publication of La novia de Sandro, a volume of poems. Her 2019 novel Las malas is about a group of transvestite street prostitutes is Sosa’s most widely known work. She was awarded the Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz Prize for Las malas in 2020. it was translated into English in 2022 as Bad Girls.
Translated Titles by Maria Firmina dos Reis
Gritty and unflinching, yet also tender, fantastical, and funny, a trans woman's coming-of-age tale about finding a community among fellow outcasts. Born in the small Argentine town of Mina Clavero, Camila is designated male but begins to identify from an early age as a girl. She is well aware that she's different from other children and reacts to her oppressive, poverty-stricken home life, with a cowed mother and abusive, alcoholic father, by acting out--with swift consequences. Deeply intelligent, she eventually leaves for the city to attend university, slipping into prostitution to make ends meet. And in Sarmiento Park, in the heart of Córdoba, she discovers the strange, wonderful world of the trans sex workers who dwell there. Taken under the wing of Auntie Encarna, the 178-year-old eternal whose house shelters this unconventional extended family, Camila becomes a part of their stories - of a Headless Man who fled his country's wars, a mute young woman who transforms into a bird, an abandoned baby boy who brings a twinkle to your eye. Camila Sosa Villada's extraordinary first novel is a rich, nuanced portrait of a marginalized community: their romantic relationships, friendships and squabbles, difficulties at work, aspirations and disappointments. It bears witness to these lives constantly haunted by the specter of death--by disease or more violent means at the hands of customers, boyfriends, or the police - yet full of passion, empathy, and insight.