Mother of the Freaks

Mothering, family, and community in Camila Sosa Villada's 'Las Malas'

Abstract

hile analysing Las malas (2019) by Camila Sosa Villada, this article looks at the family and its intersection within travesti identities and bodies. By portraying a group of travesti sex workers, Sosa Villada proposes alternative ways of constituting a family by questioning the patriarchal heteronormative structure, a structure marked by sexism, violence, homo and transphobia, and how the travesti community transforms the notion of family by making sisters and mothers out of friends and by adopting an abandoned baby. This adoption, an alternative proposal to heterosexual conception, proves to be the biggest obstacle for this community, apart from violence, prejudice, illness and premature death, given that, for the society that surrounds them, the idea of a travesti adopting a child is inconceivable. Las malas offers groundbreaking ways of creating bonds of affection and kinship beyond the structures defined by blood and the law, while also questioning notions of inheritance and genealogy, suggesting that it is through bonds that exist outside the family that feelings of belonging, sharing, and material and emotional security are experienced, especially when the blood family presents itself as a source of trauma and rejection.