It explores how poverty and social class intersect with the trans experience, highlighting the specific violence faced by working-class trans women. Book Details La mala costumbre by Alana S. Portero - Goodreads
In the vast ocean of contemporary Spanish literature, every decade delivers a title that not only breaks sales records but shatters societal frameworks. (translated as The Bad Habit ), the debut novel by Madrid-based writer Alana S. Portero, is precisely that seismic event. La mala costumbre - Alana S. Portero.epub
The novel follows an unnamed protagonist (sometimes referred to as Alex) growing up in , a blue-collar suburb of Madrid. It explores how poverty and social class intersect
There are books that inform you, and then there are books that inhabit you. Alana S. Portero’s debut novel, La mala costumbre ( Bad Habit ), falls squarely into the second category. Published originally in Spanish and now gaining international acclaim (with a keen eye on the upcoming English translation), this is not a tidy, trauma-porn memoir dressed as fiction. It is a raw, poetic, and unflinching x-ray of a specific kind of pain: growing up poor, working-class, and trans in the San Blas neighborhood of 1980s and 90s Madrid. (translated as The Bad Habit ), the debut
One of the most devastating chapters involves the "literature of the fallen," where the protagonist is forced to read sensationalist crime novels about murdered trans women as a form of entertainment for the masses. Portero’s meta-commentary on how society consumes trans suffering is sharp, angry, and desperately necessary.
Bad Habit by Alana S Portero review – in search of acceptance
Portero, a historian by training, uses classical myths and Catholic icons to describe her characters, elevating their struggles to a "mythic" status. Class and Gender: