| Bad Girls | |
| Author: | Camila Sosa Villada |
| Country: | Argentina |
| Language: | Spanish |
| Genre: | Semi-autobiographical novel |
| Set In: | Córdoba, Argentina |
| Published: | Tusquets Editores |
| Pub Date: | March 1, 2019 |
| Media Type: | Print (paperback) |
| Pages: | 228 |
| Awards: |
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| Isbn: | 978-987-670-481-6 |
| Isbn Note: | (first edition, paperback) |
Bad Girls (Spanish; Castilian: Las malas) is the first novel by Argentine author Camila Sosa Villada, first published in Argentina on March 1, 2019, by Barcelona-based book publisher Tusquets Editores,[1] which later published it in Spain on June 9, 2020.[2] The story is set in the Argentine city of Córdoba and focuses on the lives of a group of travestis who work as street prostitutes at Sarmiento Park, among which is the narrator herself.[3] [4]
The book has been a critical and commercial success.[5] It has been translated into French, German and Croatian, and will also be released in Italian, Norwegian and Brazilian Portuguese during 2021. In February 2021, it was announced that the English-language translation was in the making and would be published by Other Press under the title The Queens of Sarmiento Park.[6]
In October 2020, Las malas received the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize given by the Guadalajara International Book Fair.[7] The book was also awarded the Grand Prix de l'Héroïne given by Madame Figaro and the Premio de Narrativa en Castellano given by Barcelona bookstore Finestres.[8]
The novel will be adapted into a television series by Armando Bó.[9]
Las Malas is a fictional autobiographical work that goes back and forth in Camila's life. She writes her life experiences from her childhood in La Falda as an outcast boy, the only child of a lower-middle-class marriage, until her life in the city of Córdoba which she shared with a new family under the maternal wings of Auntie Encarna.The novel is mainly set in 2002 and it is narrated by the author and protagonist. The stories are about the difficulties that she encountered during her entire life as a transgender woman, but they are also about the lives of the group of sex workers (mostly fellow trans women) that she meets at Sarmiento Park.
Sosa Villada mentions topics such as differences among socioeconomic classes, the atrocities committed against trans women working in the streets, and the struggle that transgender children go through, among others. The author portrays several instances of violence and trauma in an intimate tone.
Las Malas has several elements of magical realism since it depicts a realistic view of the modern world with the incorporation of magical elements[11] that deal with intended blurred lines between fantasy and reality. Las Malas describes the oddities and the dreary realities trans people usually go through together with supernatural phenomena presented as fairy-tale-like segments disruptively. This amalgamation of real and magical elements elevates the tone while being informative and rough in content. The author describes the transformation of two characters into animals, a wolf and a bird and she includes fantastic characters, such as men without heads.
The characters in Las Malas love life (Camila Sosa Villada said in an interview, that there is no one who loves life more than these characters) but society at large is out to suppress that joy[12]. In the same interview, she said: "They hurt me a lot. But we continue to be born, we continue to fight, we continue to resist."[13]