Beyond the non-binary: books that invite reflection on language, bodies and gender

On July 23, a presidential decree announced the issuance of the National Identity Document (DNI) for people who perceive themselves as non-binary. Thus, Argentina became the first country in Latin America to allow its citizens to choose an option different from the traditional “Woman” and “Man”, in the “Gender” option of identity documents.

The initiative, which is part of the Gender Identity Law (LIG), takes place in the concert of different processes and struggles which, in books and literature, have been recorded through essays, memoirs and fictions. From non-binary logics to inclusive language, from the pain of the lived experience to the emotion for the conquests, from the recording of the events to the reflection, the following readings offer stories and points of view, conversations that accompany this present and enrich the issue of gender. identity and self-perception from multiple perspectives.

All books are available at Leamos.

Me baby, me princess. Luana the girl who wrote her own name by Gabriela Mansilla (Editorial Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento)

This book is an extraordinary testimony to a fight for the recognition of difference and the right to identity which has allowed, among other things, that for the first time in the world a State recognizes the gender identity assumed by a little girl. . This struggle has pushed back the limits of knowledge and professional practices, but also of policies that are deployed on childhood. It is a story that shows the inextricably subjective and political effects of any struggle for identity. This diary of Gabriela is, without a doubt, a story of inexhaustible love and struggle. But it is also an essay and a deep and extraordinary reflection on the prejudices and the established knowledge, so close many times to the ignorance and the ignominy with which we are confronted every day.

The story ends with Free Butterflies, after Luana enters elementary school and again fills us with conflicting emotions. It also shows us Gabriela Mansilla transformed and become a reference in the fight for rights. The adaptation of Yo Niña, Yo Princesa is scheduled for the end of this year and has been declared of Cultural Interest by the Nation’s Ministry of Culture.

>> Watch the conference with Gabriela Mansilla in Leamos Experience.

Pride and hubbub. The interviews of “You cannot live on love”, by Franco Torchia (exclusive content Lisons ”

Selection of interviews carried out since 2013 in the cycle “We cannot live on love” (AM1110). The cut seeks to pay particular attention to the verbiage, the conceptual corpus, the slogans and proclamations of sexogenetic and bodily activism forcing us to redefine the journalistic work of those who use these materials. The aim of the book is to expand the categories and reformulate the language. Communicating dissidents is also being dissident in communication, being the only daily radio show on sexual diversity broadcast in the world, and a public radio. The notion of “pride” and the notion of “hubbub” do not refer only to a march. They refer to the tradition of the traveling radio, the batifondo loudspeaker, an open radio with reading requests.

Ana Ojeda’s Vikinga Bonsai (Eternal Cadence)

Ana Ojeda plunges into the depths of writing and finds herself on the shores with a novel that lingers on the generosity of links and in which Lunfardo, Calabrian and inclusive language coexist in a baroque community. In its exuberance, but also in its particularity, Vikinga Bonsai confirms that language is alive and is built between all. A novel with a feminist touch, humor and an experimental register, which invites us to play with language. Vikinga Bonsai lives with Maridito, who travels in the Paraguayan jungle and with whom she has a teenage son: Little Mountain. The route of his days is traced by a bicycle that knows no other route than Boedo-San Cristóbal-Boedo, taking him from his home to work and from work to his home, after stopping at the Chinese for stock up on a menu that she always knows, little by little and then, finally, go to bed. Until morning, the cellphone screen lights up and the Apocalypse group appears like an invitation difficult to reject: a dinner with friends. From there the novel advances at a frantic pace between desperate or crazy situations. “

An Apartment in Urano from Paul B. Preciado (Anagram)

The author declares: “I am not a man. I am not a woman. I am not straight. I am not homosexual. I am not bisexual either. I am a dissident of the sex-gender system. I am the multiplicity of the cosmos locked in a binary epistemological and political regime, crying out in front of you ”. In this book, he tells about his process of transformation from Beatriz to Paul B., his bodily mutation, accompanied by a change of name. But it also analyzes the news of political, cultural and sexual radicalism, addressing various issues, such as the Catalan trial, Zapatism in Mexico, the Greek crisis, Trump’s America, the murders of Daesh as a new snuff, prostitution, treatment of the body in the cinema, harassment of trans children. A radical and necessary book on personal transformation – from Beatriz to Paul B. – which also projects a lucid transgender perspective on contemporary reality. It is a book written from the frontier, of lucid queer radicalism, which seeks to free body and mind from moral bonds and political restrictions. With a prologue by Virginie Despentes.

>> Look at “Keys to Reading Paul Preciado”, by Carolina Keve in Leamos Experience

The Contested Language: A Debate on Inclusive Language, Conversation by Beatriz Sarlo and Santiago Kalinowski (Ediciones Godot)

This book is the result of a debate which took place within the framework of the eighth edition of the Publishers’ Fair under the name “La langue en litige”. The text is the corrected recording of the exchange that took place between Beatriz Sarlo and Santiago Kalinowski. The intention was to reproduce a traditional debate logic, in which the guests knew in advance the axes on which they were going to discuss in order to prepare their arguments. In a few pages, the main objections or advantages of using inclusive language are structured. The oral report of the book allows the arguments to be interspersed with simplicity, without losing their depth. An ideal text to trigger future discussions.