#alana s. portero

[date-prisa-estamos-leyendo]

Me di cuenta de que el miedo me afectaba de un modo particular, manteniéndome en un estado perpetuo de inmadurez por alejarme de toda experiencia significativa.

La mala costumbre de Alana S. Portero.

[mrsniallhoran505]

[solreads]

Bad Habit - Review

Title: Bad Habit

Author: Alana S. Portero

Translator: Mara Faye Lethem

Genre: Contemporary

Audience: Adult

Format: Novel

Representation: Trans woman POV character

      Trans women side characters

Summary: In a working-class neighborhood of Madrid blighted by poverty and a heroin epidemic, a trans girl grows into herself in fits and spurts. She struggles, in childhood, with a community she doesn’t know how to find a place within, caught between the masculine spaces and expectations that already knows do not fit her and the feminine which she can only stand on the edge of, not knowing how to be accepted in.

As she grows older, she finds her first love and her first taste of a queer community. Soon she takes to the nightlife of downtown Madrid where she can present as feminine and find guidance from other trans women. But her journey is an ebb and flow with a disconnect from herself, an unclear future, and violence besetting her. 

Reflections: The writing and the translation were lovely; poetic, but grounded. The narrator’s bonds to the women and queer people in her community were written beautifully. Her reconnection with Margarita, an older trans woman in her neighborhood, was especially heart-wrenching. At times when she was young the narrator disdained or avoided her out of deeply internalized transmisogyny, fear of who she was, and fear of what association with Margarita could reveal about herself. But after a transphobic attack and a subsequent retreat from her burgeoning identity, the narrator begins to care for the aging Margarita with such tenderness and in doing so soothes something hurting not just from the attack but from her whole life. That instance stands out, but the book is full of a million simple, little moments of community, kinship, and shelter in other people. The mix of sorrow and love was achingly beautiful.

There’s violence and there’s pain, but this was so much more about community and support. I love the focus put on the older women (especially the older trans women) in the narrator’s life who show her a future she can have. I love the queer community that gives sanctuary and space without question and the moments other people in her neighborhood step up for her or for Margarita.

Warnings: Depictions of transphobia, misgendering, deadnaming, dysphoria, transphobic hate crimes (physical and sexual assault)

Notes on Rep: Explicit on-page representation

[transbookoftheday]

Bad Habit by Alana S. Portero

Combining the raw realism and vulnerability of Shuggie Bain and Detransition, Baby with the poignant sensibility of Pedro Almodóvar, a staggering coming-of-age novel deeply rooted in the class struggles of a trans woman growing up in Madrid in the last decades of the twentieth century.

"I saw a whole generation of boys fall like irredeemable angels."

Told in the heartrending voice of a girl trapped within the body of a boy, Bad Habit is a story of coming-of-age in working class Madrid–in a godforsaken neighborhood ironically named after a saint. Alana S. Portero's spunky protagonist struggles to make sense of herself and the world she inhabits, conveying her surroundings with mythic allusions and a poetic vitality absent from everyday life.

Set against the heroin epidemic that ravaged Madrid in the 1980s and the city’s vibrant party scene that dominated its nightlife in the 1990s, Bad Habit follows Portero’s unnamed protagonist as she grows up in a blue-collar suburb that has no place for her. Forging ahead, she discovers community and kinship in downtown Madrid, amid a lively party scene animated by junkies, pop divas, and fallen angels. But with each step she takes forward, she finds herself confronted by a violence she does not yet know how to counter; in this exciting, often terrifying, world each choice can truly be a matter of life and death.

Blistering and compassionate, Bad Habit illuminates the ties between gender and class, the search for identity, and the power of sisterhood. Shimmering in its lyrical beauty, vivid in its realism, autobiographical in its detail, it is a mesmerizing story of self-realization that speaks to the outsider in all of us.

[arquichelista]

Una vez que me dejó tocarle el pelo supe que me había ganado su confianza para siempre. La peinaba en los bares, aprendí a hacerlo con bastante habilidad; mientras le manejaba el pelo nos mirábamos a través del espejo y nos contábamos lo que tocase aquel día. Peinar a la reina travesti era un acto de reverencia y de amor. Con las hebras de su cabello entre las manos me imaginaba un pasado en el que mi madre me trenzaba el pelo o me lo recogía. Me parecía que cuando las madres peinaban a las hijas se transmitía un amor intangible y una belleza sin palabras que no podía darse de otra forma. Como una prenda tejida por dedos torcidos de abuela lleva consigo la fragancia del tiempo y de los cuidados.

[queerographies]

[La cattiva abitudine][Alana S. Portero]

Vivere la Propria Identità: Un Viaggio di Formazione tra Donne Straordinarie Titolo: La cattiva abitudineScritto da: Alana S. PorteroTitolo originale: La mala costumbreTradotto da: Giulia ZavagnaEdito da: MondadoriAnno: 2024Pagine: 192ISBN: 9788804774884 La trama di La cattiva abitudine di Alana S. Portero Non è facile abitare il corpo sbagliato. Nascere maschio e sentirsi femmina. Soprattutto…

[butchingdyke]

i bought bad habit by alana s. portero this afternoon and i cant wait to read it, i have such good expectations for this book

[dua-source]

DUA LIPA with the next Service95 Book Club pick via Instagram (August 19, 2024)

[fuegoamigo]

Me he terminado esta maravilla de Alana S. Portero con un nudo en la garganta. Emocionante, dura, bella. Menuda novela ❤️

[wttnblog]

"Bad Habit" was a Powerful First Person Look into Queer '90s Spain

It’s rare in 2024 to read a fiction book written in the first person. It seems as though we’ve moved away from that in literary fiction, instead preferring third person text that’s nonetheless deep in the mind of the protagonist. Bad Habit broke that mold, delivering prose that felt very much like a memoir in both its directness and intensity. In Alana S. Portero’s new book, translated from…

[date-prisa-estamos-leyendo]

Tenerle dentro y escucharle reír, porque reía cuando follaba, era querer morirse y detenerlo todo porque nada de lo que la vida te deparase iba a ser mejor que aquello.

La mala costumbre de Alana S. Portero.

[irhen07]

Okay so apparently Dua Lipa recently recommended the book Bad Habit (la mala costumbre) which is a novel written by spanish trans writer Alana S. Portero. It's an incredibly beautiful story about class and trans solidarity that talks about growing up trans in the spanish 80's. I'm not joking when I say that this book quickly jumped to my top 3 favorite books ever. I can't put into words how much the novel moved me. It's so insightful and hopeful, and even when it's hard to read at times the novel manages keeps its tone full of love and optimism. It will warm you inside.

Honestly I can't recommend it enough. I think the book deserves more recognition and I think anyone would enjoy reading it. Idk just read Bad Habit

[thelensart]

Please if you're trans go read Bad Habit by Alana S. Portero, it had me crying like hell in the end yesterday. I need to read more trans literature.

[libraryleopard]

October Reads

Who’s Your Daddy by Arisa White?

It Sounded Better in My Head by Nina Kenwood

Retellings: Homer’s Characters Speak in Our Time by John Livecchi

Himawari House by Harmony Becker

Hockey Girls Loves Drama Boy by Faith Erin Hicks

Rules For Ghosting by Shelly Jay Shore

Take All of Us by Natalie Leif

The House That Whispers by Lin Thompson

The Trojan Women by Euripides translated by Emily Wilson

Glitter and Concrete: A Cultural History of Drag in New York City by Elyssa Maxx Goodman

Bad Habit by Alana S. Portero

American Ghoul by Michelle McGill-Vargas

The House of Being by Natasha Trethewey

Graveyard Shift by M.L. Rio

Come on All You Ghosts by Matthew Zapruder

The Ballad of Jacquotte Delahaye by Briony Cameron

Dark of the Moon by Tracy Barrett

Blue Horses: Poems by Mary Oliver

The Ballad of Perilous Graves by Alex Jennings

Bespoke and Bespelled by Karen Healey

Haunt Sweet Home by Sarah Pinsker

The Deep Dark by Molly Knox Ostertag

[arquichelista]

Nuestros edificios eran parte de un gran proyecto franquista de construcción de viviendas de los años cincuenta bautizado como «El Gran San Blas», que antes se llamaba el Cerro de la Vaca, nombre que debía de olerles a sudor y mierda a las autoridades fascistas. Los cobradores a domicilio lo llamaban «el barrio sin madres» porque solían abrirles las puertas de las casas niños sin escolarizar; a las luminarias del régimen no se les ocurrió que las más de treinta mil familias que fueran a parar allí necesitarían colegios cerca para sus hijos y tardaron años en cubrir esa necesidad, también la del agua corriente o la de los mercados en los que abastecerse, que fueron llegando con la lentitud y la dejadez de las cosas que no le importan a quien es responsable de ellas. Los obreros nunca fueron vistos por el franquismo de otra forma que como bestias de carga que estabular en la periferia. Ese abandono generó una conciencia de clase en el barrio que las autoridades de la Transición democrática decidieron atajar a finales de los setenta y durante toda la década de los ochenta con jeringazos de heroína casi regalados. La droga fue la última forma de ejecución sumarísima de disidentes de un régimen que había encontrado la forma de perpetuarse.

[moosemonstrous]

[People I'd like to get to know better]

Thanks for the tag @existingtm 💕

Last Song: Rockafeller Skank, Fatboy Slim

Favorite Color: Purple

Currently Watching: Slayers, for my sins.

Currently Reading: Bad Habit, Alana S. Portero (thank you so much for the recommendation @irhen07!)

Last Movie: Turbo. Still not over the Snail L Jackson.

Sweet/Spicy/Savory: Changes by the hour.

Relationship Status: Eligible for certain tax benefits.

Current Obsession: Making an 'I've read it so you don't have to' ppt about Amadeus Cho and somehow rereading things fifteen times as I go it's so fucken long already aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

No pressure tags: @ulfrsmal, @avengerphobic, @drempen, @rokhal and whoever else feels like it :)