Camila Sosa Villada: "They don't want to see a transvestite writing well, they want to see a transvestite throwing darts."

Actress and writer Camila Sosa Villada (1982, Córdoba) has a cold and is holding a handkerchief. But it must be said: she never loses her charm and charisma. In just a few minutes, she sings a fragment of a chamamé, jokes with her newspaper, and orders a soda from the waiter . It's 10 a.m. in a hotel in Recoleta, and she's wearing sunglasses and a white shirt embroidered with the name of her recently released film, which is also based on her own book: Tesis sobre una domesticación (Thesis on a Domestication ), directed by Javier Van de Couter. Also on the table is her fourth work, fresh from the press: La traición de mi lengua (The Betrayal of My Language) (Tusquets), which can be read as a series of texts that touch on both grammar and sexuality, passing through that emancipatory instance of morality: betrayal, with a language that always moves toward the poetic, the refined, and velvety.

He says, "I'm not worried about anything at all. Except for my bronchial tubes," and laughs when he thinks about the possibility of losing readers due to this new reality he's facing, that of someone who writes and lives his life with joy (a fuel that's so hard to come by right now) when, apparently, things should be a little more difficult for him.

Camila Sosa Villada rebels and throws away the props they impose on her. Her attitude is always defiant : “Now I have to prove that I'm not just the girl who wrote Las malas, that I have a universe inside. That's why The Betrayal of My Tongue begins to reflect on themes that detach me from the ones I've done before. I don't want to write Las malas 2 , or stay like Beatriz Salomón with the same look until the day she dies. I want to be able to do other things, talk about other topics.”

The premiere of the adaptation of Tesis on a Domestication places her in a different place—perhaps unique in Argentine literature—because she is the screenwriter, star, and executive producer . Those who have read the book and approach the film will notice some changes, but they will realize that Sosa Villada's work in front of the camera is one of honest dedication and leaves no doubt about the scale of her ambition: she goes all out.

In that sense, for her, who was a chameleon in the theater (her formative years), literature is a space where she also wants to expand her sphere of action with every step. That's why The Betrayal of My Tongue navigates the ambiguity of genre (it can be poetry, poetic prose, or sweeping essays) and thematically shapes its aggressiveness, but with a touch of sweetness where the tension is driven by her use of words.

Some phrases as examples: “Other people’s trash is tempting to me,” “When there’s nothing left to eat, love eats itself,” “The sunken fangs of orgasm force her to write,” and that’s how this book is put together: by means of phrases taken to their maximum level of purity.

But she herself can visualize her work and look it in the face, she explains: “ Thesis on a Domestication is a book that dances around something that you don’t know what it is until at some point you realize that it’s like an animal in a cage; Las malas was a book that got to the point, but also because it was edited by Forn, so all Forn wanted was for me to throw spears or darts at the reader and make it clear to them; in Soy una tonta por quererte , there was a whole question of very broken characters, hurt by others who are just like them but who have some power over them. On the other hand, this book was different. I think it has to do with economy, syntax, and that also makes people lose interest in what one does. Because they don’t want to see a transvestite writing well. They want to see a transvestite throwing darts, saying, ‘Look how I suck cocks, how I cry, how I bleed. ’ But I believe that writing is refinement. Not in the "not in a classist sense, but in an aesthetic sense , with the aesthetics of a book. With what one receives as if it were a jewel. It is increasingly polished."

She's very clear about where she's headed: " I'm going toward grammar. Being able to write really well , like Leila Guerriero or Gabriela Wiener. Writers like that, being a writer like them. It's no longer about the idea, but about how to write it, about the pure craft of writing."

In an interview with Clarín , Camila Sosa Villada reflects on writing, film, and theater at this point in her life where the paths seem to be diverging. Where to next? Only time will tell, but right now she's in the midst of a process of change and expanding her field of endeavor.

–A new book in stores and a newly released movie. How are you feeling about all of this together?

"I'm exhausted. Why do you think I'm like this? I never planned for it all to come together. Anyway, work things don't change my schedule—traveling, reporting, and answering for what someone's written, what someone's done—much less than affecting my mood. For me, the enjoyment comes before that. I'm just experiencing a time when my mom and dad are having health issues, so I focus more on that than on more personal issues, which aren't as important as they seem. What do I know? I'm generally fine, except for these things that happen to my parents. They're old and infirm."

–Do you see any kind of dialogue between the film and this new literary work?

–I was left wanting to say more things after shooting the film. I was a little hungry to say a few things, especially about some discoveries I'd made. This is the second film I've made in my life; it's not my custom to be on a set. And it seems that what had remained as a residue, because the director didn't want to do The Human Voice, then proposed doing this play Pasiphae by Henry de Montherlant, and it had been haunting me as to why he'd changed one thing for another, and besides, in a particular play, it's impossible to say. I found the myth very attractive, which, of course, I already knew, but it was impossible to act it out. You can't say it to anyone, you can't say it to the audience, you can't say it to the bull, you can't say it to your daughter, you can't say it to another person on stage with a voice. It was really very difficult to do. And when I started writing the last text, I realized that what I had grasped to act out that text and do those scenes had to do with the relationship between lies and language, between seduction and language, how it's used as a kind of perfume, a kind of makeup to be able to attract a lover to you.

–Do you feel the same thing happens with books?

–I think so, books engage in dialogue, of course. They respond to each other as you write them. Or, to me, that's what it feels like to propose something that transcends one another. In terms of syntax, elegance, or danger, too. I think The Betrayal of My Language is more dangerous than Thesis on a Domestication.

–Beyond what you're saying, do you think that a theme that runs through book after book and in different ways is empowerment and how to break down the decorations that life imposes?

–Maybe. That's what I try to do too. I always remember Paco Giménez, my theater teacher, who was a guy who tried to bring what was behind the curtains to the forefront, and he always exposed what generally isn't exposed. What art generally does is conceal the tricks. And Paco always did the opposite: he tried to bring what was hidden to the forefront, and that seemed to me to be a way of looking at the world as well. It was a learning experience... I get emotional because he had a stroke... and he taught me a point of view that serves me to this day. That part of my literature could have come from theater, from doing theater with it. Bringing forward what is always hidden. I don't like the artifice of literature, the disguise of literature, or the disguise of relationships either.

–You brought the character you created in your novel to the screen. Was it easy to access those emotions and convey them during filming?

–I was very sad throughout the entire shoot, really very sad. Sad not only because of the filming conditions, but also because it was a character I truly recognized because of everything she was going through inside when I put my body into her. When I wrote the book, I dared to include a lot of things I had to go through afterward, and I said to myself, wow, this is powerful, this is painful. And I was very sad.

–What genre would you say The Betrayal of My Tongue belongs to?

–I have no idea, I have no idea. I don't know if it's a book of poems, or if they're short essays. Then a couple of books appeared that served as references: one by Marguerite Yourcenar, or by Marguerite Duras, or by Erri De Luca. Short texts that condense a very complex idea into a very short paragraph. This book is also the discovery that you can write something like this. That it's not necessary to write a novel or a collection of poems, but something in between that functions as an economy. If I had to write these texts again, I don't know if I could do it with such precision or with such economy of words. I would have to research what betrayal is, the great betrayals of history, ask myself questions about my own betrayals, about those who betrayed me, etc. But I started writing it, it came out like that, and it was good. I couldn't say what genre it belongs to.

–Was the process the same as how we readers received the final text?

–There's always something left behind, but in this case, not so much. The writing process was very much like it ended up being. And I also had a good time writing it. Other times, I've read books that were very bitter for me, or where I've been in a much lonelier, more conscientious, and painful world, and this book was like a party. They were texts that came out like that. And it was resolved very simply, it was very easy to write. Despite how complex it is to talk about betrayal or sexuality in childhood or the relationship between language and eroticism, it was a festive book. Besides, I think I deserved it. After The Bad Girls and the other books, and people talking about how my characters suffer, a more emotional book finally appears. I think I deserved it.

–Does betraying one's own language imply reconstructing it to escape social oppression? I was thinking especially of Sartre's phrase: "We are what we make of what was made of us."

–It's like a joke about language as something lesser than language. Like saying: "This one has a tongue," or "Watch that tongue," "Don't bite your tongue," phrases like that. As if language were a subordination of language and language were closed to certain professions, certain writers and not others. And when I was writing, I was constantly thinking about the things my mom used to say about my aunts: "This one has a tongue." Or when someone talks a lot since they were little, they say: "Oh, what a tongue this kid has," and things like that. It had to do with that, what's beneath language, and yet for many people the word language never appears, but the word tongue does.

–Considering that this is your fourth book, is it more accessible or more difficult to reach the literary universe you want to convey?

–I don't think in terms of difficulty. No. It's not difficult for me. And writing is a pretty arduous task. I know what I want to say, and when I don't know, I have editors to guide me. So I don't think about any difficulties.

–Do the actress and the writer follow very different paths or do they feed off each other in some way?

–It's the same Camila. But the writer has more money, so I always take more care of the writer than the actress. My actress is quite the renegade. I always did what I wanted in the theater, I always directed myself, and I worked with the same people for many years. And I made a very good living, but not as well as being a writer. Being an actress is also a martyr's profession, being subjected to someone else's imagination about your body, your hair, your clothes. Your face goes one way, your hair another. Your work goes somewhere else. It's quite schizophrenic. Except in the theater. The thing is, theater requires a certain amount of self-denial that I no longer feel like giving it. I'm very strict, so I have to diet, take care of myself, exercise, have a very firm training schedule. You can't leave before or after the performance. Your whole life is geared toward making the performance go well, so that the audience stands and applauds. Literature, on the other hand, happens differently. There's no way to do theater the way you write, because you write alone, at home, at the least expected moment when people are going to sleep, or you have an idea and write it as soon as you wake up. You can eat or not eat and neglect yourself like that, and that's impossible in theater because the body is very present. You can write without being published, without anyone being interested, but you can write just the same. You can't do a play for anyone.

–Is evolution something that is within your interests?

–I think I'm improving as a writer. Better in terms of the industry, that is, in terms of what's publishable, what reaches readers. I take that responsibly. It's not something I don't care about, being able to write well or better. Or that each book responds to the next and surpasses the previous one. I don't take that lightly. I like to challenge myself as a writer. In terms of how a sentence is constructed. How economical the book is, what things aren't overstated, what things are said directly, how a topic is explored until it touches on the source of that book's origin.

The betrayal of my tongue , Camila Sosa Villada (Tusquets).