Hi Romance Studiers,

After taking a day to think about the book and watch the lecture, I would say that I overall enjoyed Ricardo Piglia’s “Money to Burn”. I found the way Piglia humanizes these criminals and the surrounding characters very compelling. The main themes that I felt the story kept touching on was masculinity, specifically how those socialized in poverty settings come to view their own masculinity and what they do to perform gender in a hypermasculine way. I also found the book to be very pro sex work, despite its scenes of the criminals objectifying women, which can be seen more as an enactment of overcompensated masculinity than direct misogyny. The book was one of the few books I read throughout this semester that had me engaged mostly the whole way, and while I think my environmental settings (at work & in-between appointments) when reading the book lead me to struggle with remembering all the details, I felt forced to put down the book instead of believing relieved from having to read.

The book mentions the boys journey of understanding their masculinity a plethora of times, specifically with Brignone (the Kid) and Dorda (the Blond Gaucho). My favourite example of this story exploring masculinity with Brignone was the scene when he was spending time with the prostitute for the first time. During this conversation, you got to see a more sensitive side to Brignone that was intriguing, he opened up to the girl and felt as if this emotional intimacy resembled a sibling relationship more than a romantic one. When he brings this up to her, she acts in shock and question him about it, leaving the narrator to relay to the reader, “the Kid was very touchy on the question of his masculinity. The kid was utterly fed up of going with bum boys. Every so often he got sick of it. At present he didn’t want a single one of those boys circle the square to look at him, he’d known them under other circumstances,” (Piglia 83). How I interpreted this was that Brignone only performed in such a way to create this front for himself. A way to make up for his poor upbringing and lack of emotional support (besides his connection with Dorda which turned out to be fictitious from the real life events), he grew up in a position that ascribes one as unmasculine. As hegemonic masculinity embodies ideals of power, capital, and autonomy, Brignone enacts his autonomy (masculinity) through thievery and a lack of care for the world.

What I find so interesting about this scene was how the book depicts sex workers and humanizes them. At least in Western culture, sex work has a powerful stigma, and this stigma leads society to view these workers as those who do not deserve the respect and workers rights. Throughout Piglia’s story, he continuously emphasized how sex workers are people with emotions and capacity to care. As can be seen when we briefly explore Dorda’s upbringing and especially with Brignone’s interaction with the prostitute. After Brignone goes off about his internal conflict with being masculine and his relationship with doing gender in front of other men, the narrator states “but the Kid, in contrast (and he himself said as much), felt sane and safe with this girl, as if there were no possible danger in being around her, he only had to let himself be carried along by her for a while” (Pilgia 84-85). I found this so interesting because often in media, sex workers are viewed similar to succubus in the sense that it is a soulless job. But Piglia actively makes sex workers fleshed out individuals that care for the people they provide their services for. Later on in the story, this women becomes an important character for Brignone, someone who believes he can trust and rely on. Making it even more soul-crushing when she betrays him and has him trapped in her home until his final moments.

I really enjoyed my time reading “Money to Burn”, even if the actual burning of the money is more mythos then reality. My question for the class is, what are your thoughts on how women in the story are depicted? Let me know in the comments below and I’m excited to hear more during class 🙂