Why a collection of short stories like “I’m Crazy for Wanting You”?
I wanted to take my readers on a stroll through my twisted imagination. I’m a little crazy, and somehow my role as an actress creeps into every story. Each story seems to be written by a different character. There are a thousand personalities that live inside me. And in reality they are only a part.
Which story speaks most about her?
The first, “Thank you, Difunta Correa”. A lot was said and written when “Le Cattivi” was released. Everyone wondered whether or not it was autobiographical, whether my literature was autofiction or not. This first story of “I’m Crazy for Wanting You” is the most autobiographical thing I’ve ever written. Story of when my father and mother made a vow to a pagan virgin in Argentina that I would leave prostitution. It worked. Three months after that promise my acting career took off, I did such a beautiful and successful show that I never had to go back on the streets.
In her book there are prostitutes, trans people discriminated against, women who compromise to feed themselves, poor and unhappy families lost in remote villages, yet she doesn’t like the word “marginality”, which could be the perfect synthesis of all this.
No, I don’t love this word because it is the fruit of a bourgeois position. I cannot deny that this is a book that talks about characters on the margins, but even before being such, they are people who exist, not necessarily marginally. They are on the periphery only because there are people who monopolize a supposed center.
His life is a novel. How would you describe her to someone who knows nothing about her?
Marguerite Yourcenar wrote: “Let no one blame my life.” I can’t find the words to tell or explain it: she is the one who fell to me being a Latin American “travesti”, born poor. I always wanted to tell what was happening around me, nothing more. The word was like a gift to be able to understand what I couldn’t understand. And the most incomprehensible thing was the revulsion that my nature caused, the disgusted look with which they looked at me.
The first signals sent by Milei, the new Argentine president, seemed to be based on “live and let live”, but reality has disproved the predictions and there seems to be a retreat in terms of civil rights. How do you live this new era?
It’s painful for me to talk about it because, to be honest, a lot of people from the LGBT community, workers, people who live in very disadvantaged neighborhoods voted for him and support him. The scenario is terrible for some social groups, but they are still supporting it. The government is making devastating choices, I am thinking of restrictive cultural policies, of the way in which it establishes relationships with others, destroying the idea of equality between citizens. Yet they voted for him, and they seem happy. This pains me.
Are you afraid as part of a minority?
There are people who are afraid, I am too. But they can’t do anything to me, because I’m famous, I earn, I’m more protected than a “transvestite” who prostitutes herself on a street corner. I’m also scared for my parents. Fear is also something ancient, which keeps history going. Either they threaten you or they make promises, it’s politics.
His books are inevitably political. How do you analyze the general situation?
It seems to me that in South America there is an experiment underway where businessmen are manipulating their puppets to see how far they can go. Bolsonaro was a little worse than those who were there before, Milei is still a little worse than Bolsonaro. Where will we get to and what will be next? I’m wondering.
Yet Latin American literature is in a golden phase. And it is trans women and authors who are the protagonists. From Cristina Rivera Garza to her who sold hundreds of thousands of copies with “The Bad Ones”. How do you explain this gap between politics and literature?
For a long time we were at the bottom of the bookstores. To find a book written by a woman you had to bend down and scan the lowest shelf. Now suddenly we find ourselves occupying the center, what may seem like a fortune or an advantage actually entails a lot of responsibility, because we have to question ourselves about the power of the word. just because there are women or trans people on the scene now doesn’t mean it’s better than before. It’s not enough to be there and be protagonists. We must ask ourselves questions, whether what we write makes sense or not, whether we have internalized the same logic as the barons of literature.
What is the red thread?
For years we wrote knowing that no one would read us, we threw ourselves into literature as if it were an overflowing river. This is our artistic strength.
Do you like the definition “transgeneric literature”?
They force me to use it. I fear it is also used as a marketing operation. Publishing houses believe it will attract voters’ attention. My job is to write. Let them say what they want. As long as it serves to sell and be read. It must be underlined, however, that the trans world remains behind in all this literary boom. I am an exception, many are struggling and trying hard to make a space for themselves. Because even more than women writers, trans people have been kept away from the Academy, from writing schools, from the environments that matter.
What is your message on the day against homobitransphobia?
That we have to get used to the idea of being at constant war. Homotransphobia will never die. And we, the different, the “abnormal”, will continue to exist, like the antelopes that continue to be born in the savannah, despite being surrounded by predators ready to tear them to pieces.
