The Queens Of Sarmiento Park

Auntie Encarna's house is the queerest boarding house in the world. For Camila, who grew up as a boy in a small town in Argentina, but now lives as a woman, it is home. The queens around her are her family: Auntie Encarna, who is 178 years old; Maria, who can't speak, and has feathers growing out of her back; and a host of other glittering characters.

At night, they head together to Sarmiento Park, in the heart of the city, a large green lung with a zoo and a theme park. Potential johns cruise by in their cars, slowing down to inspect the group before selecting one with the wave of an arm. The chosen woman answers their call. Night after night, nothing changes.

Until, one freezing night, Auntie Encarna hears crying coming from the bushes. A baby boy, lost and alone. Auntie Encarna puts him in her handbag and brings him home, determined to protect him. To be a mother.

But the forces of oppression, prejudice and fear surround the family and their foundling - and soon the happiness they clutched at begins to seem like an impossible fairy tale ...

“Camila Sosa Villada draws inspiration from her past in prostitution and the legend of an Argentine saint for The Queens of Sarmiento Park , a tribute to sex workers, suffused with magic - Le MondeA language that seems to come from dreams, fairy tales, and adventure novels ... a literary sensation - Rolling Stone (Argentina)A tender testimony to the concrete poetry that is born outside the boundaries of our righteous, corseted world - taz, die tagezeitung (Germany)Not just a documentary fiction about the trans scene, but also a deeply poetic work about a group of outcasts who try with all their might to protect themselves from violence and exclusion through sisterhood, solidarity and joie de vivre - Deutschlandfunk kultur”

The most important book I've read on sexuality since Jean Genet. It's about friendship, desire, violence. It defies all the current frames of politics and literature, it's a fragment of the future Édouard Louis
A beautiful yet tragic story about sex work, gender identity and chosen family Diva
In beautifully rendered language, this debut novel from Argentine actor and writer Sosa Villada challenges contemporary ideas of gender, sexuality and love with the magical touch of a fairy tale. Wall Street Journal
A beautifully written and expertly translated work of autofiction ... Sosa Villada's tales of headless horsemen and women who turn into birds are a stunning meditation on gender, our bodies and the ties that bind NPR
Every so often, a slim book absolutely clobbers you with its exuberance and beauty - for me, this was that book -- Torrey Peters, author of Detransition, Baby
An important book: fun, tragic, political and full of marvel ... It will break your heart and at the same time make you want to laugh and dance -- Mariana Enríquez
Naked, glorious storytelling. Camila Sosa Villada's story shattered me and yet also, even in its starkest moments, convinced me that hope is stronger than despair. -- Claire Oshetsky, author of Chouette
Confronting, radical, hopeful, The Queens of Sarmiento Park does one of the most important things a book (or a life) can do. It looks at all the rubble and the dirt and asks: "Can we make anything beautiful from this?" -- Keiran Goddard, author of Hourglass
An exquisite book full of poetry, warmth and magical, raw honesty. Gorgeously written stories of lives entwined and enmeshed in the toughest of spaces, stories which felt so bloody generous through the act of sharing. Simply beautiful. -- Juno Roche, author of A Working-Class Family Ages Badly
A beautiful novel, moving, disturbing, raw and honest. In skilfully rendered language, charged with poetic energy, it takes us deep into the world of trans prostitution and explores the violent and tender bonds that unite the women who inhabit it -- Fernanda Melchor, author of Hurricane Season
The Queens of Sarmiento Park blew Argentina's collective mind with its exquisite power, tenderness, and riotous imagination -- Carolina De Robertis, author of The President and the Frog and Cantoras
From a life reminiscent of a Pedro Almodóvar film, Camila Sosa Villada has drawn an incredible piece of literature Vanity Fair (France)
A magical novel ... raw and full of love eldiario.es (Spain)
A literary sensation Rolling Stone (Argentina)
A deeply poetic work about a group of outcasts who try with all their might to protect themselves from violence and exclusion through sisterhood, solidarity and joie de vivre Deutschlandfunk kultur (Germany)
This novel celebrates trans life with lyricism and wonder ... A gem to be savoured Elle (France)
Camila Sosa Villada draws inspiration from her past in prostitution and the legend of an Argentine saint for The Queens of Sarmiento Park, a tribute to sex workers, suffused with magic Le Monde (France)
A work of searing, confrontational beauty -- Juno Mac, co-author of Revolting Prostitutes
This unflinching novel offers a fresh take on what it means to be a modern family ... ultimately, it's a story that will have you rooting for a charming mother and son duo, despite the odds being stacked against them Stylist
Staggering ... a dark and exuberant mythology of travesti life on the streets and in and out of the pink boarding houses of Sarmiento, Argentina. Highly visceral and audaciously real NB Magazine
This is a book both ferocious and magical, the story of a boarding house of trans sex workers who discover and raise a baby in Córdoba, Argentina. It's a trans iteration in a long tradition of Latin American literature: stuffed with marvels, humour, political critique, and storytelling that moves from macro to micro in the course of a paragraph. And yet, for all its specificity of place and culture, it's one of the books that best illustrates the themes that link together a growing movement of global trans literature, a book that unflinchingly asks, "how do we live?" -- Torrey Peters Guardian
Stunning... Beautiful and devastating in equal measure, this had me reading right through the night to see how the story ends BN1 Magazine
Sosa Villada's storytelling is guttural, tender, humorous and punk ... an aesthetic that drips with the oral rhythms swept up from the dark streets of Córdoba into perfect streams of poetic prose -- Julián Lopera Delgado

Camila Sosa Villada was born in 1982 in La Falda (Cordoba, Argentina). She is a writer, actress, and singer, and previously earned a living as a sex worker, street vendor and maid. She holds degrees in communication and theatre from the National University of Cordoba. Her first novel, The Queens of Sarmiento Park, won the Premio Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz in Mexico, the Grand Prix de l'Heroine Madame Figaro in France, and the Premio de Narrativa en Castellano in Spain.

Auntie Encarna's house is the queerest boarding house in the world. For Camila, who grew up as a boy in a small town in Argentina, but now lives as a woman, it is home. The queens around her are her family: Auntie Encarna, who is 178 years old; Maria, who can't speak, and has feathers growing out of her back; and a host of other glittering characters.At night, they head together to Sarmiento Park, in the heart of the city, a large green lung with a zoo and a theme park. Potential johns cruise by in their cars, slowing down to inspect the group before selecting one with the wave of an arm. The chosen woman answers their call. Night after night, nothing changes.Until, one freezing night, Auntie Encarna hears crying coming from the bushes. A baby boy, lost and alone. Auntie Encarna puts him in her handbag and brings him home, determined to protect him. To be a mother.But the forces of oppression, prejudice and fear surround the family and their foundling - and soon the happiness they clutched at begins to seem like an impossible fairy tale ...

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