From legendary activist and Pose actress Cecilia Gentili comes the groundbreaking debut of a transgender Latina childhood that re-orders the field of LGBTQ+ memoir
WINNER of the 2023 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, or even grow.
Cecilia Gentili is Originally from Argentina, Cecilia Gentili came to the USA pursuing a safer life as a transgender woman. She lived undocumented for 10 years, hustling doing sex work which came with drug use. After surviving arrests and an immigration detention, she accessed recovery services and won asylum. She subsequently served as Director of Policy at GMHC and founded Transgender Equity Consulting, which works to ensure all people living on the margins receive dignity and respect. A storyteller and actress, Cecilia has appeared in FX's Pose and her own one-woman show. Faltas is her first book.
"One of the best memoirs I’ve ever read ... it just straightforwardly depicts both the ways we fail young trans people every day and how young trans people still find the time and space to experience joy, pleasure, and — occasionally — freedom."
"It’s a story by a trans woman recounting her youth in a provincial city in Argentina, and how being from an early age identifiable as some kind of gender and sexual other puts her in a position of being exploited by basically everybody.. It’s a really terrific, terrific book."
Los Angeles Review of Books
“Gentili’s life was a rough ride of poverty, transphobia, familial abandonment, and sexual abuse, set against the backdrop of the 1970s and 1980s.” @Hugh_Ryan on Cecilia Gentili‘s “Faltas: Letters to Everyone in My Hometown Who Isn’t My Rapist.” https://t.co/FI3tYt7SjD