I'm a Fool to Want You

May 1, 2024
A commanding voice emerges in nine stories from Argentine writer Sosa Villada. Travestis, transgender sex workers of South America, are the stars of this striking collection. We follow them as they befriend jazz singers (including Billie Holiday), become stage actresses, find themselves trapped in nunneries, and start their own societies in the jungle. Sosa Villada, a transgender writer and actress, is an expert at the brutal, striking line: "She'd feel guilty, only she's a travesti. She works on the road; guilt isn't for creatures like her. Her lot is to stretch out in the sun, cover herself in Hinds cream and Impulse deodorant, and make her uncle sick with desire." Sosa Villada's confident voice threads through her characters as they fight to survive--from Billie Holiday refusing to return her mink coat to her ex-husband, to a travesti pawning a stolen watch to afford ingredients for scones, to a grandmother teaching her granddaughter to be proud of her skin (and how to aim a rifle). The stories interrogate what relationships demand of women, from "The Beard," which follows a girlfriend-for-hire for wealthy gay men, to "Don't Spend Too Long in the Dust," which shows the fallout of an abusive marriage, including the children left behind. Many of the stories have a magical realist bent, particularly the vivid final one, "Six Breasts," in which travestis, exiled from society and living in a magical jungle, can lay eggs and have headless lovers. Quite a few of the stories in this hard-hitting collection follow characters as they're beaten down by bad johns, money troubles, and supernatural wild dogs, but this last story holds some hope: A travesti gives birth. The others are awed: "How were we to know that our bodies, dry, clay vessels with pointless tits, were capable of creating life?" Stark depictions of the lives of sex workers meet magical realism.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

May 15, 2024
Argentine writer and actress Villada's (Bad Girls, 2019) remarkable collection of stories portrays queer characters struggling to find their place in society. In "Thank You, Difunta Correa," Don Sosa and La Grace drive through the desert to ask the saint, Difunta Correa, for their "travesti daughter" to find a better job. Siblings Mart�n and Irup� figure out how to survive with their authoritarian father after their mother leaves in "Don't Spend Too Long in the Dust." In "The Night Doesn't Want to End Just Yet," a travesti sex worker takes a risk with rich-looking guys and gets revenge when they refuse to pay her. And in the title story, Maria befriends Billie Holiday in an underground jazz den and discovers the horrifying results of oppression and abuse. Villada blends magical realism with everyday situations to bring her characters and their stories to life. Her talent for capturing emotions on the page gives a powerful and compassionate voice to characters often trapped in exploitation and fear to be their true selves.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.