Fernanda de Albuquerque
Maurizio Jannelli

This book chronicles the life and encounters of Fernanda Farias de Albuqueque, aka Princesa, Princess. A story of transsexual life. The experience of a body in dissonance, in transit from one sexual identity to another, stuck on the border of ambiguity. Neither man nor woman: an ancient fascination, a fright between the legs. Princesa’s tale starts from afar: from northeastern Brazil, bordering the caatinga, once a desert of madmen, saints, and bandits. And from a male body, Fernandinho, that a thousand country Jose’s make female for their pleasure.

Princesa is also the narrative of a metamorphosis and an escape. The first winds its way through the chemistry of silicone and the plastic surgery of Brazilian bombaderas, clandestine builders of “illegal” bodies and transsexuals. The second, catastrophic, ruin to an empty center: the big, broken-down cities of Brazil and Europe. Paradoxical escape, in any case. For she, the anomaly, to remove herself from view makes herself more visible than ever and, in the stereotypical concealment of an almost feminine body, literally constructed as-you-want-it, becomes transparent. To want her by night, however, except to despise her by day, are a river of Brazilian, Spanish, French, Italian Jose; that growing wave that on the sidewalks of Rio, Rome or Milan seeks transsexual prostitution to subside, with the first sun, in ephemeral certainties.

“The certainty lives simple,” says the protagonist. Men on one side, women on the other. What about me? “