Camila Sosa: We have always been marginal writers who have had to pay a price to be respected

Trans writers have always been despised and “questioned” by the status quo, Argentina said on Thursday Camila Sosa Villada, during a talk with young people attending the Guadalajara International Book Fair (FIL).

Camila Sosa: ‘That’s what we were, bad citizens, bad people, bad Christians. Badly educated ‘

“Literature has always been in the hands of people who have had the opportunity to study, but we have always been the marginal writers who have been questioned, we have had to pay a price to be respected or hope that we would die to reissue the entire work ”, claimed.

Sosa Villada (Córdoba, 1982) remembered writers like the Chileans Pedro Lemebel and Claudia Rodríguez, whom some sectors have vilified for not having left the academy and dedicating themselves to literature out of passion, in addition to stepping out of heteronorm and binaryism.

The trans actress and writer had a pleasant conversation accompanied by the Mexican Ana Garcia Bergua in which he spoke of the process of building his novel The evil ones (2019) with which she jumped into the public arena and whose protagonists are dedicated to transvestism and prostitution, from which she herself lived for a time.

The narrator assured that, although she started working in literature just a few years ago and has dedicated more than 15 years to acting, the idea of ​​narrating and telling stories was always on her mind.

“Being a transvestite, an actress, a prostitute too, I did all of that on the body of a writer. The evil ones and the books that I have written up to now are books that I began to write from a very young age and I am only now finding words for that “, said.

Argentina also wrote the poetry book Sandro’s girlfriend (2015) and an autobiographical essay entitled The useless trip (2018) and said that the Spanish Federico Garcia Lorca was his starting point to delve into writing, an activity that he always considered as “A very intimate and very lonely act.”

Remembered that when he was younger his parents fostered his love of reading and gave him books on special dates or when he got good grades at school, in addition to giving him a typewriter that he used to create his first stories.

Literature also gave him the possibility to overcome and leave behind the stage of his life in which prostitution and addictions were a constant.

“For me everything is about making language, combining words, making images with the word, which is the only way I understand of being able to restore a little dignity to a life that was quite unworthy, although now I am very worthy”, he assured with some emotion.

Sosa Villada received from the director of FIL, Marisol Schulz, the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize that she could not collect in 2020, because the fair was held last year virtually due to the covid-19 pandemic.

FIL takes place from November 27 to December 5 with the attendance of 600 writers from 46 countries, with the participation of more than 3,000 professionals and 255 exhibitors from 27 countries with an editorial offer of 240,000 titles in 10,000 square meters of exhibition. (I)