Bad Girls

Posted on November 13, 2026 by Matteya

I was really looking forward to this book at the beginning of this course and it certainly did not disappoint! I loved the style of writing as well as the flow of the novel.

Chosen family was a huge part of this book. I think that especially for queer and trans people, it’s extremely important to have that companionship with someone who understands what you’re going through. Even when parents and families are accepting of one’s queer identity, it’s important to have friends and chosen family. It’s almost like a right of passage, in my opinion. The token straight is way more common than the gay best friend haha

Trans women face an incredible amount of persecution and hate, much more than trans men and other queer people. I thought that the authors note at the beginning of the book was really interesting. I had never heard the word travesti before. I’m not sure that I fully understood it but I think the way that the women in the book identify with the word is really important. When you find a certain identity that suits you or that you feel represents you well, you take a certain pride in it. At night when the travestis would walk around the park together, waiting for clients, the bonds that they built were an important part of their lives.

I wasn’t sure if I liked the magical realism aspect. I kind of forgot about it and then when Auntie Encarna was mentioned to be 178 years old and that she was dating a headless man I was confused. I also thought the story line of Maria turning into a bird was interesting. I think the end of the book shows how important it is to have queer and trans inclusive spaces because when we don’t have that, the community we feel around each other suffers.

My question for this week is would you say that you have a chosen family? I personally feel that I do, especially with my friends who understand my gender identity and queerness.

This week’s music pairing will be The Liason by Angela Morley. She is a trans woman and is a classical composer and conductor. You can read more about her in the video. I think the mood of the piece is fitting for the story. There is a lot of trans joy and togetherness in the novel but also a lot of tragedy. The cello line really feels bittersweet to me.

 

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Bad Girls by Camila Sosa Villada: Community Amid Hardships

Posted on November 12, 2026 by Sydney Hyndman

I found this book very interesting, and I'd characterize it as a page turner. This novel was different than those we have read so far, as it focused on "travestis", which I understand to be a Latin term associated with individuals whose gender identity differs from the sex they were given at birth. Engaging with the stories of those who reside in this demographic was interesting, as it is not something I have read much about before. 

In the particular context of this story, the identities of the travestis are closely connected to social dynamics such as sex work. This theme of sex work actually made me think back to a course I took in first year: Canadian Politics. Here, we learned about the evolution of sex work legislation in Canada. In Bedford v. Canada (2013), the Supreme Court struck down prostitution laws on the grounds that they placed sex workers at risk. Subsequently, Parliament passed the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act (2014), which criminalized purchasing sexual services but did NOT criminalize the sale of such services. The main takeaway from this case study was that criminalizing sex work can make an already dangerous profession even riskier, so Parliament instead focused on criminalizing the purchase of sexual services in an effort to reduce demand and protect sex workers. Anyways, I apologize for this little legislation lesson - can you tell I want to go to law school? 

Now to connect this dynamic to the novel: I think the experiences of the travestis in this story illustrate how working in the shadows carries incredible threats at various levels. These threats become more dangerous when the work is pushed further underground. In this case, the park was "ruined entirely when they flooded it with light" and "it was decided that the underground world in which we plied our trade, the beautiful shadows, needed to come to an end" (156). The thing is, the work does not necessarily disappear. Rather, it may continue out of sight, in ways that are more dangerous for those partaking in it. And here, the lives of the travestis were negatively impacted because they lost their connection with one another, as they lost their central gathering place.

One thing I found particularly admirable about this novel is how it highlights the sense of community among the travestis despite the incredible hardships they face. For instance, Auntie Encarna's pink house is in the first few pages described as "the safest possible place for them" (5). 

The image I chose for this novel is what I imagined of the travestis running around in the night by the park and on the streets.

My question for the class: Does cracking down on sex work address the underlying issues within the industry, or does it just push sex work deeper into the shadows?




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Bad Girls: one for all and all for one

Posted on November 12, 2026 by kcauchon

What a great book. Apart from Little Eyes, I believe this is the most traditional novel we’ve read thus far in terms of structure and format. The narration and flow of the story really agreed with me, I found myself getting really immersed in the story and forgetting I was even reading a book.

What was really beautiful about this book to me was the collectivity, the sisterhood among the travestis. Often, Sosa Villada writes them as though they are one. For example, “They are suddenly alert, their skin puckered with goose bumps, hair standing on end, lungs taking in a much oxygen as they can, jaws clenched.” (4) I really love this aspect of the writing, since it shows the collectivity and oneness of such a community. They evidently have their own individual stories, as Sosa Villada expertly depicts throughout the book, but there is a connection that they share. It reminds me of a line from the movie La Bola Negra (which I saw in theatres this week and will see again, it’s so good everyone should watch it) that is something along the lines of  “your tragedies are all the same”. However, I like how in this book, while there is certainly a heavy depiction of tragedy, the culture of the travestis is still celebrated. It depicts how they share similar joys as well as sorrows. I think where the book becomes more tragic is when we lose that sense of collectivity. When the girls leave Auntie Encarna’s house and only return when something bad happens. Also I want to talk about Maria’s transformation into a bird because from what I recall, that was the only fantastical element of the story. It was otherwise quite realistic. I couldn’t really determine what this represented, my initial hypothesis was some form of disease? But I’d love to know what the rest of the class thought. I also wonder what aspects of this book were autobiographical and which were not, as this seemed to me more a story of travestis than about Camila as a character. But also it was through her story that we experience the world of travestis, so her role in the story is not insignificant.

Otherwise, I don’t really have more to say on this book. I wish I had more in depth thoughts, but seeing as I finished the book about 2 hours ago, it hasn’t really had time to settle in my mind I suppose. My question for the class today is: What do you think Maria’s avian transformation represented, if anything?

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About Las malas – Camila Sosa Villada

Posted on November 12, 2026 by juligalv

Ngl, it is crazy to read a book in Vancouver about places I have visited before. I enjoyed the book, mainly because of the discussions that we had before throughout the classes. There are not the typical women issues, we have been reading so far but we read about problems that travestis. I want to put a stop there and explain a little the difference between travesti and trans women. The travesti is a sexual identity as well but it is deeply tied with other social factors such as poverty, sexual work and being Latin American. While being trans is not directly attached to the social factor.

Until recently, being travesty in Argentina meant having a life expectancy of 35/40 years, being expelled from your house, having sexual work as the only opportunity. That changed a little with some laws promoted in 2010 but the community still facing the same issues every day.

And I think that the novel portrays these aspects in a perfect way. But to a certain extent she avoids the victim’s narrative and also sheds light in the little things and emotions that she felt when using lipstick and mascara or how they felt protected in the pink house. There are not typically women issues, there is a poetic reflection on identity, motherhood, desire and sexuality from an intersectional point of view. Even though the things and obstacles the narrator goes through are not desirables for any person, regardless of gender, identity, she is capable of ‘finding beauty’ to some extent. Having the possibility to approach the topic of women/trans/travesty writing from another way, more low-class problems somehow worked for me; I found it more relatable is not about a woman that is a professor in La Sorbonne but a rock-solid reality.

Sadly, I was reading a novel when an attack to travesties occurred also in a park with a forest but not in Córdoba but in Buenos Aires. It remind me directly to the book and makes me wonder how different the reality is from travesties even with the laws that protects their identity or grant a certain work force quota. They are still facing the same issues that the author shows us in the book.  I cannot avoid relating the women that were attacked with the travesties that populate the book. How would have Camila, la tía encarna or Natalí reacted?

I also want to highlight that Camila, the author, is constantly having agency even when she talks about how does she wants to be read. The literary critic characterized a lot of aspects of the novel as magic realism. The transformation of María, the climbing of the trees, and so on. And in every interview that she gives is always claiming that the representation has nothing to do with magic realism; that’s the way of the reality that she perceived. I think this is not only a gesture, is a whole statement. She does not want to be labelled, she imposes her own beliefs and theories.

That’s an interest claim for our class’s topic.

Do you think this novel can be equally labeled as women writing that the other we’ve read so far?

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Pola Oloixarac on Botany, Sex, Vigilance: “Dark Constellations” [Free Choice-Week]

Posted on November 12, 2026 by dleoar

THIS WEEK I have replaced Carmen Villada’s novel Bad Girls with Pola Oloixarac’s techno-punk sci-fi novel Dark Constellations (2015). This is the third novel by Oloixarac I have read preceded by Mona (2019) [An international Peruvian student publishes her first novel with immense success and completes a PhD program at Ivy League wherein she receives a literary short list for Norway’s most important literary prize. Mona arrives high, bruised, dissociated at event only for a mythological Leviathan to ignite the Ragnarok] and her non-fictional novel Bad Hombre (2024) [weaponary of cancel culture to serve the oligarchy who benefit from higher power within different desired points on an intersectional level]. With Dark Constellations, I notice Oloixarac’s literary penchant for erudite prose, jargon-language, sex, literary inter-text, occult practices and academic settings.

Dark Constellations is divided into three parts. At a mere 200 pages with botanical pictures, this novel fools you with its rich exploration on sex descriptions devoid of salacious description, erudite and jargon-prose. I will say this is no easy read, that given the novel’s nature my first reading shallowly describes its surface. There is more to it, one reading is not sufficient for a reader. A convoluted novel.

The first part is set in 1882. On the final day of 1882, a voyage arrives at sea in Famara (Canary Islands). Amongst crew is 16-year-old botanist Nikklas Bruun. Here Bruun researches Crissia pallida, a substance mysteriously said to induce hallucinogenic states eliminating barriers between species and mind to mind. Moreover, Nikklas Bruun catapults into fame as in his writing his accounts for his sexual initiation in a fertility ritual wherein female members of the local tribe induce Bruun in a trance and mate with him.

“The commentators have estimated that there were approximately twenty-three girls, as well as a handful of adults with shell-hard skin, that took part in these ceremonies on this island, where trees can live for several thousand years (Dracaena draco, vegetal dragons whose dry skeletons branch into cartilaginous crests, and which contain a dark lymph famed for its regenerative qualities). The members of the expedition believed they were suddenly part of an astonishing fertility ritual; as the orgies begin, the descriptions lose their habitual precision. In a timid but denotative style marked by periods of discomfort, the young Niklas Bruun describes the women advancing individually or “in groups of two or three,” throwing themselves with a tranquil ferocity onto the explorers’ genital geysers, twisting down over the tips of their organs.” (8)

The book contains images, botanic language, essay-like narration and a plentiful of material of feminist readings, the role women have in the narrative.

The second part follows Cassio Liberman Brandão da Silva.

The narrative opens with Sonia, a brilliant Argentine student with good grades invited by her faculty to do ethnographic research on Brazilian territory. While there, Sonia attempt to assimilate her reality: the new environment, the observance of the local Indigenous tribe . Constant observation allows Sonia to reveal her biases and emotional world. Eventually Sonia begins an affair  with a bourgeoisie Brazilian engineer (João Fernando Brandão da Silva), abandons her research, moves to Brazil as she births Cassio. João Fernando works abroad (New York in aerial-nautical engineering) while Sonia raises Cassio in Brazilian upper-life. One day, Sonia decides to return Buenos Aires, taking Cassio with her. Reconnects with her father, together they raise Cassio, sending him to elite schooling. Cassio, precocious with social awareness practices justice. Precocious with knowledge and skill too, Cassio starts hacking international programs, in so far as hacking pentagon programs. Charges against him are dropped in exchange for information on the insecurities of the hacked programs.

“By the time Cassio was fourteen, he had written a program that exploited a vulnerability at the National Bank, and had impassively, even disdainfully, confronted several nation states and their laws. He’d hijacked computers at the Pentagon, and taken control of various local networks in Argentina and Brazil. The university’s engineering department and the newspaper Clarín had the most powerful servers, so he made them his slaves, having come to the realization that the illnesses of living systems created perfect opportunities to penetrate them.” (26) 

It is important to note that Oloixarac works with a medium-large ensemble of characters; some return, some mention once or twice; narration temporalities fluctuate throughout the novel.

As Cassio grows up, he ostracizes himself from society, loneliness himself, drowns on the sorrows of his appearance, dwells on the solitude a geek suffers. Cassio fails to establish any romantic or sexual experience, allowing Oloixarac to add scenes of masturbation with metaphors devoid of any pleasantry. (Also important to note that most sexual scenes in this novel while highly descriptive, evoke an image of non-sensuality).

“In pornographic films, the climax of each individual scene consists of the money shot; eventually the scenes converge in the narrative climax of the orgy, the cephalopods built of human flesh. A series of monstrous transformations ensued, and attention shifted from hole to hole, creating groups of beings that were progressively more complex, whereby a single surface covered unseen interior spaces. Double and triple penetration of the female was a common theme, multiple aggregations into tense muscular cumulous clouds. Cassio sometimes shot the magma of his being into the nearest Coke can, gathering these remains of himself. The human cephalopods confirmed a deep intuition: that everything could be penetrated, opened, rebuilt in the purest of terms—terms native to a machine whose form was still foreign to him, but that he, advancing obsessively step by step through his environment, would eventually come to know and control. 

The little predator had been born within him. This wasn’t the first time he’d felt it move.” (27)

Cassio attempts a connection with Melina, fellow geek and Theatre actress. Cassio suffers disappointment when he discovers  Melina is interested in sexual desires for an other. 

“Melina emitted a series of strange sounds, and then her voice faded away. He asked if she was asleep. She didn’t answer.

Cassio’s mouth was now numb—she had apparently applied some spermicidal lubricant. Cassio raised his eyes to her incandescent Mac, still sending its rays of light across the bed. A few days before, he’d installed the latest operating system and a few little programs to help her avoid leaving traces on the internet. He hadn’t yet checked to see if they were running properly. 

Her Facebook page was open. There were several messages from Marto, one of the actors from the musical. The little arrows of her messages curved toward his—she’d answered every one. The odds of a musical comedy actor being heterosexual were extremely low, but to judge from Marto’s photos—that bulge—and the content of his messages, it seemed indisputable that he was. Cassio made a few calculations, ones that even someone without his privileged mathematical cranial hemisphere could have managed. The data were clear: what he’d eaten was a muffin full of Marto’s genetic leftovers from, technically, just a few hours ago, a thought Cassio found thoroughly unpleasant.” (94-95). 

Seeking solace at a bar from this scene, Cassio is recruited by a former acquitance of his rogue hacking days: Max Lambart.

Part III — This part picks up on Cassio yet introduces new perspective Piera (2024).

Piera is a biologist. A peripheral figure. She is working with Max and Cassio for Estromatoliton. Cassio is the lead researcher. This is a tech-start up in Argentina, financed by the Ministry of Genetics, secretly mass surveillance program. The project is titled the Lat Am Unification Project: devices named Bionose are secretly placed throughout geographical location. These devices sniff, extract DNA material from citizens, sending it to a biobank. Estromatoliton’s job is create a algorithm capable of processing and interpreting large amounts of genetic data. Thereby, all citizens’ location, as well as life trajectories are logged. The interactions between citizens is at risk of exposure. This mining of user data is profiting.

Piera becomes a love interest for Cassio. They both try Crissia pallid (discovered by Nikklas Bruun) and as they both plan to sabotage the start-up, the story fluctuates back to the Nikklas Bruun who is revealed to have joined a worshiping cult towards a giant tall, life-sized rat who is a “man was a rat six feet tall, who said, in perfect and derisive human speech:“ (88). They engage in a ritual of hybrid-pollination between women and orchids.

Cassio and Piera infect the Bionose with a hybrid-virus, they do so with Cassio’s own DNA, thereby creating a living, technological virus-entity.

Like I said, there is a lot going on in this novel. The novel comments on stromatolites, having multiple layers. Perhaps, this can be said about Dark Constellations instead: multi-layered.

Oloixarac’s style forces active reading, dealing with erudite knowledge, jargon-language, percolation of essay-length narration and literary atmosphere.

Did I enjoy? Not particularly. I am not accustomed to this type of genre. I really enjoyed her other novels nonetheless, and would be excited to read Savage Theories. Oloixarac’s literary ambition is unmatched. ♦

 

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Bad Girls

Posted on November 12, 2026 by Sofia

This was a tough read, but a good read. I can’t lie, I felt completely overwhelmed by amount of violence and cruelty that the travestis experienced. At first, I also thought this book would be written in the first person plural, however, I believe it’s on a page six that we first encounter Camila’s “I”, and in the chapters that follow she is clearly the narrator.

Still, I found the use of “we” particularly interesting. In the author’s note, Sosa Villada explains that she uses the word travestis because other terminology “doesn’t respect our experience as travestis in these regions” and because “they wouldn’t want to go by any other name” (xi). The power of names and naming has come up in some of our other readings, such as A Girl Returned where the main character is just “l’arminuta,” and The Days of Abandonment with the “pouverella” character. In this book though, naming is a clear act reclamation of identity, a way of being able to define yourself, a way of baptized into the group (like little Twinkle in Her Eye).

Another thing that really woke me up when reading the introduction:

“Once again Northern academia was being thrust upon us while down here we were busy surviving, living, fucking, and eating, even if all there was on our plates was dirt” (no numeral just the first page).

I found this particularly striking. I sometimes wonder whether, in all our philosophical discussions about what is women’s writing, should we read women’s writing, we are losing sight of the writing itself: the stories, the experiences, and the women behind them. This book reminded me once again that there are lives being lived beyond the theoretical and abstract framework we want to understand them in. After reading the author’s biography, I immediately thought, wow I want to read about her life. And I did.

As I mentioned, this book was really reaally sad at times. But to describe it simply as sad would ignore the bits of beauty and the bits of hope. As Angie reminds us, being a travesti is also a celebration. At one point, reflecting on Angie’s death, Camila writes, “we forgot the most important thing: that being a travesti is a celebration. The most beautiful of us all was no longer there to remind us” (130).

Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhh. I can’t even write anymore. Despite the violence, the abuse, the deaths, the Camila tries to focus on beauty too, superficial or otherwise. Perhaps that is why this book was so difficult for me to read, even though I didn’t want to stop. Perhaps it really doesn’t matter what I write in this blog, or what I say in discussion. Sometimes, even though this is a literature class where we analyze literature, it’s good to just sit with a book and listen.

Sofia

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Why the kids and not the parents?

Posted on November 10, 2026 by Amada Libertad

This book, by far, has been my favorite read for this class.

Do you blame the nanny? I don’t.

Leila Slimani does an amazing job in crafting a narrative that fits everyone’s biases. Through Slimani’s story, to blame or not to blame the nanny is a byproduct of the reader’s own biases. What do you notice, what details strike you the most, how far your analysis of class, race, and gender dynamics can overcome the gory aspects of what happened?

Louise

Overview

We can agree that Louise was not just a nanny, she was a cleaner, a cook, interior designer, planner, teacher, and entertainer. However, she was just still paid for being a nanny, aka take care of the children. Some people could argue that no one asked her to be all of those things, that it was actually on her and her strange obsession with taking over the lives of the Masses.

Only a few times did the Masses, especially Paul, worry about “the nanny’s long hours” because he doesn’t want “her to accuse us of exploiting her one day” (p. 54). Myriam said she will fix the problem. She confronts Louise but ends up “thrilled” that Louise takes it upon herself, it is her fault. This is followed by small apologies once in a while, cheap gifts, and used clothes.

Did she have OCD?

Imagine being secluded in a strangers apartment, taking care of two children, surrounded by dirt and messyness. Imagine forcing yourself to not clean, to not organize because you are not being paid to do it. Nevertheless you are still forced to come to that space everyday. Dishes pilling up, dust, dirty clothes, the smell of trash. Would you be able to spend your entire day without taking care of the mess of a stranger without being paid for it?

Maybe, we could argue that she did not have to go that far. But, what if you were scared to not find another job? How can you prove to your employers that you are the right choice? How can you prove you are irreplaceable to secure your job that has no protections?

Maybe, we could argue that she just wanted the life of the Masses, to live a fantasy of what life could be, of motherhood, homemaking, and domesticity. For this specific point I want to argue that this is the capitalist fantasy that fits Louises’ background, a fantasy that is hard to question because it’s not 100% chosen. Instead, to an extent, it is imposed by the circumstances, by her past, her background, money, lack of proper stable housing, etc.

Contradictions and Rebellion

Throughout the book we see a weird fight between the desire and hate for this chosen/imposed fantasy. Moments of lucidity become more common as Louise becomes a “more accepted” part of the family. Like glitches in the matrix, Louise becomes more open and vulnerable to the truths she hides, the humanity in her. In the Masses’ trip to Greece, Louise is able to taste a bit of those privileges she once should have deserved just because of the color of her skin. For instance, autonomy weirdly becomes natural the moment she pushes Mila at the beach. She is annoyed, but she no longer performs, she reacts like the real parents of the child: irritation, boundaries, and selfishness.

When they go for dinner, the three of them, for the first time, Louise almost gets the courage to “tell them something — doesn’t matter what, something about her — but she doesn’t dare” (p.76) Why is she so scared? When was the last time you felt that scared to talk about yourself to someone? Is it just the fear of being unprofessional?

The more this lucidity is noticed in Louise, the more annoyed the Masses get, the more worried they are that they are giving too much to Louise. Resentful. The worry is no longer that she is doing too much, it is that they, instead might be giving her too much. The amount of work becomes normal, their gestures of appreciation, of caution, have become excessive.

Are this really gestures of appreciation? Why is increasing her paycheck not an option? They can afford a trip, an expensive watch, impulsive shopping, hosting friends at their home, but not increase Louise paycheck? Why, weirdly, it feels like they are being so nice to Louise. Did you get deceived? The Masses are giving Louise what rich people think can replace money. Social and cultural capital are the main currency. They are giving her a taste of their life, a peek into their privacy, a spot that can only be taken by people of the same class. Pity is not empathy.

Beyond class dynamics

However, we should not see Louise only as a victim either. She also is a privileged person in comparison to other people in the book. Here is where the complexity of the book and the blame becomes tricky.

“No illegal immigrants, agreed?”

She is chosen, she is different. She is not like the other nannies. Racism and Xenophobia.

Louise knows that she is special and she loves it. She knows she has an advantage, that the fantasy she chose fits her and attracts others.

She doesn’t need to pay or fake marriage for her papers, like Wafa did.

Her isolation, to an extent, is chosen. The people that are naturally around her do not fit the fantasy she belongs to.

She is respected by the friends of the Masses, she is respected in the streets, by her landlord, no one questions her capacity to do her job. She is respected by the masses, she is feared, to an extent by Myriam.

However, as we advance through the book we can see that her whiteness and her femininity are not enough to escape the misfortunes and judgements that being poor brings.

Here is where the understanding or at least a message that I think Slimani is trying to convey is that maybe these features, these privileges, are what makes Louise so dangerous in comparison to the other nannies. For Louise it is easier to accept and embrace the fantasy, but at the same time it is easier for her to understand that the fantasy is not real, that she deserves a different fantasy or that, if nothing else, she has more of a chance to force that fantasy into reality.

The unquestioned historical privileges that she embodies as a French woman, blind her from her own reality.

For Myriam a similar opposite process happens too, her historically unquestioned imposed disadvantages blind her from her own actions, from her desires to perform and achieve a different kind of fantasy.

A society of disconnection, where sorority is a threat to your own capitalist endeavors.

This is just a very superficial aim to understand some of the dynamics the Slimani carefully crafts in her book. There is so much to say about Myriam, Paul, and the kids, but this will make the blog into a paper.

To conclude, I will say: I do not think we can only blame Louise for what happened. Do you?

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The Pink House

Posted on November 9, 2026 by ava

I sat with this one for a little while. When I started reading, I sighed, knowing that this would be a sad one like many we have read. No happy endings probably. I was both right and wrong. I was overwhelmed by the sadness of the realities the travestis faced and by how painful it is to read about the cruel treatment society inflicted on people who deserved to live “normal lives” free from violence and injustice for simply embracing who they are just like anyone else.  I was wrong to think there was no happy ending because their partial survival was a happy ending. The stories that got carried forward by novelists like Camila Sosa Villada is the happy ending. The stories of injustice, the harsh realities.

I do think I read with the intention of finding common threads between the novels we read and one theme we keep returning to is motherhood. In this novel though that theme stood out in a unique way through the travestis’ desire to experience motherhood especially motherhood through Auntie Encarna and Twinkle in Her Eye and their admiration for the women who took shelter in the pink house and gave birth to their children. Also, I think for them Auntie Encarna (178 years old?) brought a sense of safety to their chaos which they all were, in a sense, after and she was able to provide a form of maternal love for them.

On motherhood, Camila writes:

“Nothing was as beautiful as her. How could we deny our love for her, or for our blood mothers, the monsters who had driven us crazy. The woman standing there, who bore the hatred of the world on her shoulders, was far worthier of our love even if she could be a bitch and a despot, a desperate, lonely woman capable of anything” (p. 69).

I still am not sure what women’s writing is. Do we even need an answer? Is it important to have an answer? Maybe because of the reparations aspect of things for women’s writing? This novel was written by a trans woman. Does that make it women’s writing, queer writing, or both? Is there a certain checklist for a novel to be considered women’s writing then?

I think a similarity with the last novel we read, That Hair, is the search for identity and belonging which I thought about as I read this novel.

One thing this novel did well was to show the clear divide between the experience of womanhood and the luxury of having one’s womanhood recognized by society. The travestis desire recognition as such and acceptance into the very society that rejects them. The freedom to live and be recognized as who they are is what they most yearn for and yet that very desire exposes them to violence, bringing sorrow to many and death to some. The relationship between the men (the Johns and the fathers), portrayed as brutish individuals, and the travestis is one to examine for sure. The concept of family was another one. The travestis were a family, and Auntie Encarna was their mom figure, who divided her love between “the orphans.” This reminds me of how beautiful some of the prose was and I enjoyed reading it very much. It was charged with pain, but nevertheless beautiful.

One thing I was confused about was the character of Maria the Mute who then transformed into Maria the Bird (???). I didn’t make the connection but I think she must symbolize something? I also don’t know if I enjoyed the overly fictional side of the novel (like the transformation into the bird) but oh well.

I particularly liked this one passage on page 185, where Camila talks about Auntie Mara as the record keeper, a part of the country’s history, in a way exposing the hypocrisy of society:

“Auntie Mara was a part of our country’s history, the happy, pornographic story of a country where bold men worked the land and the grandchildren of immigrants populated it, all of whom, the foreigners, the Blacks, the Indians, and the mestizos, to a man, would have been burned at the stake for sleeping with a travesti. Auntie Mara had kept a record of all those who had once, twice, or more, out of desperation, curiosity, or secret yearning, given themselves to a travesti body. She had a full chronicle of those occasions and expected them all to come back to her travesti pagoda with the confidence of someone who knows that for certain people it’s easier to die than change.”

As always, looking forward to our discussion this Friday!

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10 Camila Sosa Villada “Bad Girls”

Posted on November 8, 2026 by dnabi

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Th-Tgdkqmgw  (Donna Summer 1981 Bad Girls)

Back to the South American street life stories which I love, away from boring middle class European stories, these women are living life honestly and openly. This is another autofiction and so not focused on beautiful prose or weaving multi-layered storylines or character development, just a simple message, that trans women prostitutes are feminists too.

Camila tells us that she expects a shitty life in which her desires are forever repressed (107), but this is also true of most people, they sell their dreams for a shitty job in a corporation that eats away at their autonomy and agency. Sarmiento Park is next to the most important financial district in South America, and beside the university, traditionally the 2 major client groups for prostitutes after politicians. While the corporate family men are being as hypocritical as the prostitutes, living a lie, their values gone, their forbidden desires fulfilled enabling the economy to function (55, 108, 119). Everyone thinks it is someone else’s father or husband, but just in case no families talk about prostitution. Angie’s boyfriend builds houses for other people, the same way that Angie sleeps with other men (125). At least the prostitutes have autonomy and agency, free from romantic love, liberated from capitalism, family, and social security (11).

The part I loved was the focus on community as family. They have a safe refuge, Auntie Encarna’s pink house, to centre their lives. They live near the park, a large green space with a zoo and theme park but at night taken over by the prostitutes (1) so it’s close to home. The girls are different but family, as Camila “didn’t belong to” her birth family (62). They even adopt a baby as a family, a baby who looked at them as normal people, like they had never been appreciated before (8), further developing the bonds between them. Two girls (Laura and Nadina) graduate to move away and raise a family like happens in a birth family (36).

Sadly, over time things change for the worse. “The park was ruined when they flooded it with light, bringing new life to the night, athletes, families, art schools, police station” (156). Auntie Encarna had become fearful of the girls, the girls had no gathering spot, so couldn’t reach each other and “the bond grew weak” (157). As with all families, members started dying, the city streets are no longer theirs (188), life is so bad that Auntie Encarna kills herself and her baby – women killing children is becoming a theme of our class’s books – but at the funeral the girls shared memories of their happy family life (192). On to a next chapter, trans prostitutes live the same as all women, reinventing themselves to survive.

Do you agree that trans street prostitutes are the same as women and men who prostitute themselves for money at soul-less corporate jobs ?

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Hair means everything

Posted on November 6, 2026 by qtoca

The story was written in a way that felt different from the previous books we’ve read. It carried the same narration style as Ru where we go between exposition about the character’s family, then back to herself and how she felt about her own identity and hair (mostly taking place in salons). I will say, it was hard to get into; maybe it’s because I felt disconnected from her history and didn’t understand the cultural history that fueled the animosity of race in the region she was from.

I know, however, that there is tension in who she is because of her hair, its texture, shape, and difficulty in taming. Her hair has become a key identifier of who she is and how people perceive her and even comes back as a theme at the end of the story (her hair being a person in itself). Within her own family, she is expected to conform to stereotypes of what is deemed pretty in Angola and raises an internalised expectation of how she should maintain herself. Scenes where the hairdresser straightens her hair and uses products with pictures of models not even looking like her felt like a way to erase traces of their background; to assimilate. It made me uncomfy.

I don’t know many people in my personal life who actually spoke to me about these exact struggles (with Richmond being a town filled mostly with straight asian hair,) however, I’ve experienced within my own family disappointment when it came to just the slightest bit of wave in their hair. My mom specifically grew up with wavy hair and complimented me profusely growing up, saying how happy she is that I didn’t get her texture. During celebrations, straightening her hair is the first thing she does: the first step to becoming formal and beautiful.

Funnily, I with pin straight hair would curl it when I needed to look beautiful. This made me realize that sometimes we chase things that we don’t have and it can drive us crazy. Of course, this feeling is not to the same extent as the author experienced, especially since her involvement with hair often came with racial remarks, but it made me think how crucial hair is to women in general too. I wouldn’t dare to imagine going bald, and this itself made me think how important my hair is to who I am and how confident I feel about my beauty. A bad hairday, haircut, is enough for me to want to isolate… to think that I’m forever ruined until it grows back… I wonder if men ever feel the same.

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