A review by jaelynx
Bad Girls: A Novel by Camila Sosa Villada

challenging emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

In a park in Córdoba, Argentina, a group of travesti sex workers under the leadership of 178-year-old Auntie Encara, discovers an abandoned child left amongst the bushes. The group of travesti begin to care for the child together, offering a reprieve from their lives of violent customers, transphobic cops, poverty and AIDS. Woven into their tales of friendship, romance and squabbles are fantastical elements such as a mute girl’s transformation into a bird, a girl who is a werewolf, and the headless men fleeing the wars in the east.

This is a very moving and painful portrait of trans community for better and worse. It’s quite bleak in many ways with how much trans sex workers are dehumanised; but there is a thread of togetherness and solidarity between the characters even when they are at odds.