The Useless Journey: Trans/Writing

In this autobiographical essay that was born a classic, Argentine actress and writer Camila Sosa Villada retrieves primordial memories of her childhood in Córdoba to reflect on literature, writing, family, poverty, and the relationship between them. In a frank and poetic exercise of self-investigation, where sensitivity and social consciousness combine, the writer recognizes in literary creation a gesture of resistance and self-preservation. "I say: writing first, then sadness. And it is a victory over this fate of my family that never accepted their poverty: first, I knew how to write, and then I learned to be sad."

By retracing the origins of her own literature, Sosa Villada discovers the inescapable presence of her parents, who gifted her with the knowledge of letters long before their paths diverged: "My father taught me to write, and my mother taught me to read. They took me to the edge of a forest and left me there alone, hoping that I would enter and get lost forever."

Rich in anthological phrases and unforgettable definitions about literature (including "a very difficult animal to hunt" and "the transvestite is the sister of writing on this journey of renunciation"), the writer also engages in a dialogue with all those for whom reading is an essential, albeit terrifying, act. Those who, like her, know the "power of the pleasure of solitude" provided by books, her first refuge against the poverty of her childhood, the sadness of her mother, and the violence of her father.

Guided by the readings of Marguerite Duras, Wislawa Szymborska, and Carson McCullers, whose words have reverberated and remain within her forever, Sosa Villada finds her own words, "so alcoholic" like her father, "so helpless and insatiable" like her mother, making writing a necessary and urgent act, innate and fatal, as it can give voice to the stories that yearn to be told.

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