Faltas: Letters to Everyone in My Hometown Who Isn’t My Rapist

A rich and moving epistolary memoir about transgender childhood, sexual trauma, motherhood, and a young queer life in 1970s Argentina

Winner of the ALA Stonewall Book Award. As heard on NPR's Latino USA

In these hilarious and heartbreaking letters, Cecilia Gentili reinvents the trans memoir, putting the confession squarely between the writer and her enemies, paramours and friends. Writing to childhood figures such as her rapist's daughter, her father's mistress, her best friend, and her mother, Gentili probes deeply into the bitter cruelty, buried secrets, and delicious gossip of a small town. Is she here for revenge, or forgiveness? Both! And more! A story of sex, theft, murder, motherhood, and outrageous fashion choices, Faltas is a beautiful, messy meditation on what it takes to heal, and even grow.

"One of the best memoirs I've ever read."--Autostraddle

"Uses humor and vivid storytelling to talk not only about abuse and trauma, but also joy and survival."--NPR

"A little earthquake of a book."--Xtra

"I don't know if I've ever read anything so emotionally honest and morally rigorous. Fuck all the college reading lists for Ethics 101. Just assign Faltas. It's funnier than Kant, and more realistic."--them

"Blunt, no-punch-pulling... Gentili is able to reframe [her] experiences--as well as her formative clashes with colorism and transphobia--as communal projects rather than isolated incidents, the burden from which only she would otherwise bear."--Vulture

"A painstaking, personal and power-filled manifesto for survivors and trans women and anyone dreaming and yearning on the margins."--Janet Mock, author of Redefining Realness

"A brilliant writer whose Faltas (which is Spanish for "errors") are infallible reports from the front lines of trans literature. This book is irresistible."--Edmund White, author of A Boy's Own Story

"These are bewitching accounts that do everything all at once: accuse, forgive, mock, heal, teach, seduce; stories that transcend classification and reality even as they tell hard truths. Cecilia Gentili is a singular voice that you can't miss."--Torrey Peters, author of Detransition, Baby

"Faltas pulsates with the same thrill as listening in secretly to a phone call, opening someone else's mail, reading a strangers' diary. You know it's wrong but you would do anything to keep going."--Morgan M Page, writer, Framing Agnes

"In some ways I may never finish processing this book. Gentili's writing is so raw without ever feeling unpolished, so personal and honest and unflinching. Alongside Dream Rooms and A Year Without a Name: A Memoir, it is a trans memoir that apologizes for nothing and refuses to make compromises for cisgender readers. Gentili's treatment of the trauma central to Faltas is unparalleled; nothing feels sensationalized but nothing is shied away from. A phenomenal, important book."--Gus Thompson, The Ivy Bookshop (Baltimore, MD)

Literary Nonfiction. Memoir. Latinx Studies. LGBTQ+ Studies. Women's Studies.