Autobiography and crossover in Las malas by Camila Sosa Villada

Abstract

The aim of this article is to analyze the uses of the autobiography self in the novel Las malas (2019), by the Argentine writer Camila Sosa Villada. Based on the novel’s account of the protagonist’s childhood and adolescence, I will study the way she names herself in the story, making the text an identitarian and militant portrait of her life as a trans woman. Furthermore, following the postulates of Paul B. Preciado in his essay collection Un apartamento en Urano (2019)—where he considers the trans body as an “space of mixings”— I will discuss the depiction of the self in Las malas as a multiplicity of voices that interact in the intersection of the gender reassignment process, a phenomenon that Preciado defines as “the crossing”; the movement in which the trans body crosses a political frontier and  connects with the community whether this community accepts or rejects it.