https://journals.scientia.international/SIJLLA

Scientia International Journal for

Linguistics, Letters and Arts

Vol. 1, 1 (2026)

Type: [Research Article] | DOI: 10.56365/hmzdw988

Open access article under the CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0).

Cassandra Rios, dissident bodies and the representation of trans

characters in Brazilian literature

Luciana Lima Silva1

1 PhD in Literary Theory and History, University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9296-6934

Abstract

This article aims to present the relevance of Cassandra Rios - an author whose books became a popular publishing phenomenon

in Brazil in the mid-20th century - in the construction and consolidation of the representation of dissident and trans bodies in

Brazilian literature. Based on the writer's works, and by connecting them with productions by other authors from other periods,

the article seeks to develop a queer historiography that highlights the issues of violence and gender that permeate LGBTQIA+

narratives, especially in contexts of historical regression, which expose and emphasize attempts to marginalize, repress, and

control dissident bodies.

Keywords: Cassandra Rios; Brazilian literature; queer literature; dissident bodies; repression; marginalization.

Article details | Open peer review

Edited by:

William Jônatas Vidal Coutinho

Reviewed by:

Luis Fernando da Rosa Marozo

Naiara Souza da Silva

Citation:

Lima Silva, L. (2026). Cassandra Rios, Dissident Bodies

and the Representation of Trans Characters in Brazilian

Literature: Some Topics. Scientia International Journal for

Linguistics, Letters and Arts, 1(1).

https://doi.org/10.56365/hmzdw988

Article history

Received: 16/12/2025

Revised: 13/03/2026

Accepted: 13/03/2026

Available: 16/07/2026

Scientia International Journal for Linguistics, Letters and Arts2 of 9

1. An introduction: Cassandra Rios and censorship

In 20th-century Brazil, from the creation of the Public Entertainment Censorship Service in 1945 until

the end of the Brazilian military dictatorship (1964-1985), a dynamic of censorship prevailed for many

decades. It was expressed above all through the banning of works produced by artists such as the writer

Cassandra Rios, who addressed in her books love between women and the representation of trans and queer

bodies, among other themes considered offensive to the "morality and good customs" then in force in the

country.

Cassandra Rios was the pseudonym of Odete Rios Pérez Perañez Gonzáles Hernández Arrelano, or

simply Odete Rios, a Brazilian writer born in 1932 in the Catholic and traditional neighborhood of Perdizes

(São Paulo, SP). At the age of sixteen, she published her first book, A volúpia do pecado (1948). Although

the novel, an erotic work that portrayed lesbian love between two teenage girls, was rejected by every

publisher that received it, the author decided to publish it with her family's own resources. The work's success

was immense: Cassandra produced almost ten new printings over ten years to meet the enormous public

interest, with available copies selling out quickly. In 1970, she became the first Brazilian woman writer to

reach the mark of 1 million copies sold.

The exact number of books published by the "Sappho of Perdizes," as she came to be known, is

unknown, since some publications were issued clandestinely; however, it is known that the number exceeds

fifty. Of this total, at least 36 works were censored, generally for one common reason: content considered

"subversive."

In the opinion issued by the Public Entertainment Censorship Service of the Federal Police

Department

, Cassandra's book Copacabana Posto 6 (1956) appears as banned. The document considers the

book's message "negative, psychologically false in certain aspects of relationship, harmful and depressing,"

in addition to "subverting moral concepts" by using "unjustified biblical quotations." It is, therefore, a ban

tied to an idea of preserving so-called "morality and good customs"; above all, it is a ban that, like all bans

of the period, seeks to give censorship a technical and formal appearance by using language that displays a

detailed and comprehensive assessment of the materials analyzed, thereby lending a veneer of coherence to

the dictatorial arbitrariness of the period.

Despite the relentless bans, Cassandra Rios did not stop publishing or, as far as possible, giving life

to the characters she liked to create: lesbians, trans women and men, and homosexuals, generally in affective

and erotic contexts.

It is also known that the author published works using male pseudonyms; these generally dealt with

heterosexual love. In the study "Odete, the Androgyne: Cassandra Rios's Male Pseudonyms," the researcher

Marcelo Branquinho Massucatto Resende surveys some of the writer's publications in which she used men's

names. Thus, it is known that "under the pseudonym Oliver River's (the English word for 'rio'), the novels

Valéria, a freira nua; Mônica, a insaciável; Rosa, a irresistível; and Andra, traição sexual were found, while

under the pseudonym Clarence Rivier (the French word for 'rio'), the works Sonho de viúva and Andarilho

do sexo were found; all form part of the 'Love sex collection,' published by Gama publishing house between

1978 and 1980"

Under these pseudonyms, Cassandra found greater freedom to write, since the persecution of her name

seems to have continued even after the period of censorship. In Hanna Korich's documentary Cassandra

Rios, a Safo de Perdizes (2013), Cassandra explains, during an interview with Jô Soares, that she used this

subterfuge in order to publish. The strategy, however, caused Cassandra losses: taking advantage of a certain

The ban on Cassandra Rios's Copacabana Posto 6 (1956) is available at: <https://documentosrevelados.com.br/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/cassandra-rios.jpg>.

Accessed on: 2 Aug. 2023.

Marcelo Branquinho Massucatto Resende, "Odete, the Androgyne: Cassandra Rios's Male Pseudonyms." Revista Crioula no. 24: gender and sexuality

dissidences in Portuguese-language literatures, 2019, p. 115.

Scientia International Journal for Linguistics, Letters and Arts3 of 9

air of "clandestinity" surrounding the publications, the publishers that issued these books apparently found

loopholes to avoid paying the author.

Cassandra's works depict marginalized subjects, commonly placed in erotic and affective contexts.

The writer always emphasized that her characters sought love, something perceptible in a critical reading,

although censorship and the common sense linked to morality and good customs at the time when she

published considered her work merely pornographic and harmful.

The covers of Cassandra's books had strong erotic appeal, and the interior of the works was generally

produced with low-cost materials, making the final price of the product more accessible. They were books

often read in secret, given their content considered "forbidden."

The artist's production was tireless: it was common for Cassandra Rios to write more than one book

at the same time, and in some years she published several works. In 1965, for example, she published six

books: Uma mulher diferente, Macária, Tessa, a gata, A serpente e a flor, Um escorpião na balança, and

Veneno. All had enormous repercussions.

Several of Cassandra Rios's books were adapted for film: the box-office success Ariella (1980), based

on the book A paranoica (1969), starred Nicole Puzzi and was directed by John Herbert, who also directed

Tessa, a gata (1982), an adaptation of the book of the same name; and A mulher serpente e a flor (1983),

which was scripted from A serpente e a flor (1965) by Benedito Ruy Barbosa and directed by J. Marreco.

In a period marked by publications that debated issues of gender, race, and class, which began

circulating from 1970 onward in the context of political opening - such as the newspaper Chanacomchana

(1981), led by the Lesbian Feminist Group, and the newspaper Lampião da Esquina (1978-1981), organized

by journalist João Antônio Mascarenhas and edited by figures such as João Silvério Trevisan, Darcy

Penteado, Gasparino da Mata, and Aguinaldo Silva - Cassandra Rios already had an established career and

was an important reference in debates related to GLS agendas (today LGBTQIA+). She was a pioneer in

giving voice to homoaffective and transsexual characters, allowing them to appear subjectively in literary

works beyond the pathologizing, secondary, or merely erotic gaze that had until then been assigned to them.

Considered the "papess of homosexualism," "cursed," "amoral," "subversive," and "pornographic" by

right-wing institutions, Cassandra Rios declared that the Bible was her bedside book, called herself a

"moralist" by explaining that she conceived of sex without love as an immoral act, and expressed conservative

opinions in the interviews she gave. Despite these statements, she said she understood that "the human being

is a symbiosis of morality, immorality, and obscenity"

. Because of the complexity offered by the Cassandra

persona - she said she preferred that only her characters speak - she was dismissed by the left-wing

intelligentsia of the time. In this regard, a 1978 issue of Lampião da Esquina, which published the author's

first interview with the newspaper, perceived her as "sophisticated, tacky, clairvoyant, moralistic, eccentric,

provincial, rebellious, repressed - an entanglement that does not fit academic schemes, because she blows

them apart"

. Regardless of the acceptance of censorship and criticism, Cassandra achieved the goal she

sought: reaching the reading public. Today, she stands as an unavoidable reference in studies on dissident

bodies in Brazilian literature.

Moreover, Cassandra Rios authored two works centered on trans women. This is the case of Georgette

(1956), a novel that offers a gaze upon the trans body unprecedented in Brazilian literature up to that point,

highlighting scenarios of displacement, subalternity, marginalization, and violence through the development

of the story of the character Roberto, or Bob, from childhood to the gender-affirming genital surgery to which

Excerpt from the interview "Cassandra Rios: in that case, even the Bible is pornographic," given to the newspaper Lampião da Esquina. Rio de Janeiro, year 3,

no. 29, Oct. 1980, p. 17. Available at: <https://www.grupodignidade.org.br/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/29.pdf>. Accessed on: 25 Sep. 2023.

Excerpt from the interview "Cassandra Rios still resists," given to the newspaper Lampião da Esquina. Rio de Janeiro, year 1, no. 5, Oct. 1978, p. 8. Available

at: <https://www.grupodignidade.org.br/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/09-LAMPIAO-DA-ESQUINA-EDICAO-05-OUTUBRO-1978.pdf>. Accessed on: 25 Sep.

2023.

Scientia International Journal for Linguistics, Letters and Arts4 of 9

she submits; and of Uma mulher diferente, originally published in 1965, which announces in its first

paragraphs the murder of a woman whose body is found floating in a river. It is not, however, the death of

an ordinary woman, but of Ana Maria, the different woman expressed in the title. "Different," in this case,

because she is a trans woman - and therefore a fatal victim of transphobia.

As happened with most of Cassandra Rios's works, these were also censored - Georgette was also

excommunicated, together with other works, by a church - and were accused of offending "morality and good

customs."

2. "MORALITY," "GOOD CUSTOMS," AND THE SEARCH FOR A QUEER

HISTORIOGRAPHY

The invocation of morality and good customs in Brazil dates back to remote times. Fueled by clashes

between Nazi-fascist and communist groups around the world, especially in Europe, the agenda gained force

in Brazil above all through the dissemination of false and nonexistent threats, following the model of the

Cohen Plan. By presenting a supposed plan for a seizure of power orchestrated by communists, the Cohen

Plan was used by Getúlio Vargas as justification for the 1937 coup d'etat, allowing him to remain in power

through the dictatorship established under the Estado Novo.

A few years after it had been used as a vehicle for political maneuvering, information came to light

that the document - which detailed terrorist actions supposedly to be carried out by the Communist

International (Komintern), a group founded in 1919 by the Russian Vladimir Lenin and inspired by the

International Workingmen's Association created by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, whose premise was to

bring together the various communist parties existing around the world - had been forged, in a scheme

between government and army, by Brazilian Integralist Action, a far-right political movement created in 1932

by Plínio Salgado, based on Italian and German fascist ideals and whose motto was "God, Fatherland, and

Family," the founding triad of conservatism that continues to serve as a guiding pillar for fascist-inspired

governments in the Americas in the 21st century.

In the broader study I developed in "Afetos áridos, espaços movediços: um estudo sobre violências

de gênero em Cassandra Rios, Maria Valéria Rezende e outras escritoras daqui e dali"

, the dissertation

from which this article derives, I develop more extensively the idea of "morality and good customs," which

culminates in the consolidation, within conservatism, of the idea of aberration associated with dissident

bodies, since such bodies would represent a break with the ideals of gender performance consolidated by

Church and State.

In this brief article, however, I outline repression through a socially widespread sense of morality and,

as a gesture of resistance to attempts at repression and to the forceful violence directed at queer bodies, the

increase in literary productions featuring trans characters - including those created by trans authors.

In this regard, moreover, the following question arises, whose answer will be sketched below: what

is the trajectory of trans representation in Brazilian literature?

In search of a precursor trans representation, I found the dissertation entitled Um percurso pelas

configurações do corpo de personagens travestis em narrativas brasileiras do século XX: 1960-1980

, in

which the researcher Carlos Eduardo Albuquerque Fernandes offers a very in-depth survey of the beginnings

Luciana Lima Silva. "Afetos áridos, espaços movediços: um estudo sobre violências de gênero em Cassandra Rios, Maria Valéria Rezende e outras escritoras

daqui e dali." 2023. 1 online resource (169 p.) Doctoral dissertation. University of Campinas, Institute of Language Studies, Campinas, SP. Available at:

<https://www.repositorio.unicamp.br/acervo/detalhe/1374139>. Accessed on: 30 Sep. 2025.

Carlos Eduardo Albuquerque Fernandes. Um percurso pelas configurações do corpo de personagens travestis em narrativas brasileiras do século XX: 1960-

1980. Doctoral dissertation in Letters. Federal University of Paraíba, 2016. Available at:

<https://repositorio.ufpb.br/jspui/bitstream/tede/9301/2/arquivototal.pdf>. Accessed on: 21 Sep. 2023.

Scientia International Journal for Linguistics, Letters and Arts5 of 9

of trans representation in Brazilian literature and points out that the first prominent appearance of a

transgender character occurred in 1936, in the short story "A grande atração," by the Ceará-born writer

Raimundo Magalhães Jr. In the text, Luigi Bianchi is, despite a name associated with the masculine, a trans

woman and lyric soprano who dreamed of being accepted into a renowned opera company, but was admitted

only to a decaying circus, where she performed musical numbers and trained dogs.

There is a long hiatus between "A grande atração" (1936), by Raimundo Magalhães Jr., and the

previously cited Georgette (1956), by Cassandra Rios, but from the 1950s onward one observes a growing

volume of representations of trans bodies in Brazilian literature. Without intending to cover the totality of

productions, the following pages present a brief timeline with some examples.

In 1965, Cassandra Rios published the already mentioned Uma mulher diferente, and in 1970 O

travesti was released, a book by Adelaide Carraro, an author who, like Cassandra, was a lesbian woman who

sold thousands of copies of her works and had many publications banned by censorship because they were

considered obscene and pornographic. In O travesti, we meet the character Rubens in her transition into

Jaqueline, a trans woman who survives through prostitution and is constantly subjected to intolerance,

violence, and police persecution.

In Rubem Fonseca's Feliz ano novo (1975), there is the short story "Dia dos namorados," in which

Viveca Lindfords is a trans woman and sex worker who robs and blackmails a client, a married banker who

is surprised to see her naked. As in Uma mulher diferente (1965), this story also features a detective who

guides the narrative thread.

Also from 1975 is Vida cachorra, a work that compiles texts by writers such as Aguinaldo Silva,

author of the short story "Amor grego," a love story between the trans sex worker Lina Lee and the Greek

sailor Cristo Xantopoulos. The writer also constructs trans characters in the novels Primeiras cartas aos

andróginos (1975) and Lábios que beijei (1992) - in both works, however, the characters are secondary and

live on the margins of the law.

In 1978, the writer Julio César Moreira Martins published the short story "Ruiva" in the anthology

Sabe quem dançou? In this text, the watchmaker Juarez, from Minas Gerais, migrates to São Paulo in search

of freedom and acceptance of her trans identity, but, disillusioned and disappointed, ultimately returns to her

hometown.

From that same year is Travesti (1978), composed of two novellas written by Roberto Freire. In one

of them, "O milagre," the character Joselin is rejected and expelled from home by her family, who do not

accept her trans identity; once on the streets, she turns to prostitution to survive.

Trans protagonists are also present in two works from the following year: in the play Shirley, a história

de um travesti (1979), by playwright and screenwriter Leopoldo Serran, who classifies his work as the story

of "a character who agrees to face every humiliation in order to be faithful to her desire"

; and in two stories

included in Darcy Penteado's Teoremambo (1979), namely "Noites de Rosali," which narrates the trajectory

of the travesti Rosali, and "A bichinha da sorveteria," whose character, pejoratively referred to in the title,

works in an ice-cream shop in the interior of Minas Gerais and is frequently discriminated against, until the

day she imitates Carmen Miranda perfectly in a contest and is applauded by the town's inhabitants.

In 1985, the Minas Gerais writer Silviano Santiago published the novel Stella Manhattan, whose

eponymous character is the travesti identity of Eduardo da Costa e Silva, a figure of high society who

personifies in the work a game of appearances associated with her social class. Among 20th-century works

Excerpt from the interview "The travesti is a gunslinger; every day she has to overcome a challenge," given by Leopoldo Serran to the newspaper Lampião da

Esquina, no. 18, Nov. 1979.

Scientia International Journal for Linguistics, Letters and Arts6 of 9

starring trans characters, this is undoubtedly the one that has circulated most widely among readers,

researchers, and literary critics combined, being sold, read, and studied to this day in diverse circles.

Also a novel is O fantasma travesti (1988), by Silvia Orthof, a work with fantastic elements that

addresses gender issues from a perspective original to Brazilian literature, approaching the queer theory

proposed above all by Judith Butler by presenting characters who are not associated with the masculine or

the feminine, but rather with what would be a neutral or non-binary gender, as seen in this passage describing

Ziriguidum, the protagonist of the work: "It is our god-goddess, travesti, who has nothing to do with what is

imagined in fanciful religions. Ziriguidum is not Messiah, nor Allah, Oxala, Osiris, or Christ. Ziriguidum is

God-Goddess, a neutral and mysterious thing. It is the all-powerful one here, but has nothing saintly in either

feminine or masculine form"

And, to conclude the examples of protagonists from the last century, there is the book Nicola (1999),

by Danilo Angrimani, whose central character sees herself as a desiring woman when she looks in the mirror,

but performs a reality in which she is a stern university professor, married to a woman and with children.

There are also works that do not necessarily present characters who assume a trans identity, yet cross

gender boundaries. This is the case, for example, of Grande sertão: veredas (1956), the Brazilian modernist

novel by Guimarães Rosa set in the backlands of Minas Gerais, whose protagonist is Riobaldo, a former

jagunço in love with Diadorim, his best friend, who has assumed a masculine identity since childhood in

order to be accepted and respected within the band, but whose body, after death, is revealed in the following

way: "That Diadorim was the body of a woman, a perfect young woman [...]. Thus she was disenchanted, in

such a terrible enchantment [...]. Diadorim! Diadorim was a woman. Diadorim was a woman, as the sun does

not kindle the waters of the Urucuia River, as I sobbed out my despair"

. Regarding Diadorim, researcher

Amara Moira proposes that she can be considered a trans character, "but not in a subjectivist conception,

since we do not know how he thought about his own condition: trans from a political perspective," since,

having been born with a body associated with the feminine because of the genital organ, she "constructed a

masculine identity for herself and was, indeed, recognized as such"

Amara Moira, in the text "Monstruoso corpo de delito: personagens transexuais na literatura

brasileira," also surveyed secondary characters considered trans, or other protagonists who have

characteristics that deviate from the gender performance expected by the surroundings in which they are

inserted. This is the case, for example, of As mulheres de mantilha (1879), by Joaquim Manuel de Macedo,

in which the character Isidoro disguises himself as a woman so as not to be drafted for military recruitment

and ends up attracting the love of Inês, who suffers because she considers this love unrealizable; of the

character Cândido, in Raul Pompéia's book Ateneu (1888), who signs as Cândida the love letters he writes;

of Albino, the washerman in the novel O cortiço (1890), by Aluísio Azevedo, presented in the narrative as

"effeminate" and treated by the washerwomen as someone "of the same sex"; of Luzia-Homem (1903), by

Domingos Olímpio, whose eponymous protagonist is presented as "a woman who had a boy's downy upper

lip, legs and arms covered with coarse fuzz and bearing the tone of strength, with virile airs, a virago, averse

to men, she must be one of those errors of nature, marked with the stigma of the monstrous deviations of the

accursed womb that conceived them"

; of "Mariazinha," a character in Capitães de areia (1937), by Jorge

Amado, always referred to in quotation marks or under the title "pederast," as in the excerpt "a pederast who

had been arrested and said he was called 'Mariazinha'"

; and of Eusébiozinho, a character in the chronicle

Sylvia Orthof. O fantasma travesti. Rio de Janeiro: Espaço e Tempo, 1988, p. 12.

Guimarães Rosa. Grande sertão: veredas. Rio de Janeiro: Nova Aguilar, 1956, p. 861.

Amara Moira. "Monstruoso corpo de delito." Suplemento Pernambuco, 10 Dec. 2018. Available at:

<https://www.suplementopernambuco.com.br/artigos/2198-monstruoso-corpo-de-delito-personagens-transexuais-na-literatura-brasileira.html>. Accessed on: 22

Sep. 2023.

Domingos Olímpio. Luzia-Homem. Rio de Janeiro: Companhia Litho-Typographia, 1903, p. 22.

Jorge Amado. Capitães de areia. Rio de Janeiro: José Olympio, 1937, p. 136.

Scientia International Journal for Linguistics, Letters and Arts7 of 9

"Delicado," and "Alipinho," from the chronicle "Noiva da morte," both by Nelson Rodrigues, published in

1950, which address the suicide of trans people from a pejorative perspective.

There is also, in Caio Fernando de Abreu's Morangos mofados (1981), the short story "Sargento

Garcia," which presents the character Isadora, a trans woman responsible for the brothel where the young

Hermes has his first sexual experience with Sergeant Garcia.

Already in these first two decades of the 21st century, trans characters have appeared in a very large

volume of fictional works, among which the following stand out: the short story "Triunfo dos pelos" (2000),

by Aretusa Von, which narrates the story of a woman who wishes to be a man and one day, upon waking,

perceives herself with a male body and sees her universe of possibilities expand; the novel A inevitável

história de Letícia Diniz (2006), by Marcelo Pedreira, which narrates the story of a trans woman who, after

a series of acts of violence, moves at age sixteen from Porto Velho to Rio de Janeiro and becomes a famous

sex worker, soon migrating to Italy to work as a porn actress and returning to Brazil with even greater fame,

something that nevertheless proves insufficient to contain her melancholy; Do fundo do poço se vê a lua

(2010), by Joca Reiners Terron, which follows Cleo during her process of subjectivation, underscored by the

gender-affirming genital surgery she undergoes and by the displacement she undertakes from São Paulo to

Egypt; Luís Antônio-Gabriela (2012), by writer and playwright Nelson Baskerville, which fictionalizes the

story of his brother, Luís Antônio, a homosexual man who migrated from Santos (SP) to Bilbao, Spain, where

he assumed the identity of Gabriela and performed artistically until 2006, the year in which he succumbed to

HIV; Sergio Y vai à América (2014), a novel by Alexandre Vidal Porto whose protagonist, Dr. Amaro, is a

psychoanalyst who seeks knowledge about transsexuality after discovering that a former patient had moved

to the United States and, there, had recognized herself as a trans woman; As fantasias eletivas (2016), by

Carlos Henrique Schroeder, in which Copi, a trans woman, artist, journalist, and sex worker, is rejected by

her mother and moves from Argentina to Brazil; the poetry book De trans pra frente (2017), by Dodi Leal,

which includes a poem in which the poetic voice transforms anger, abandonment, and femininity into an

assertion of authorship and womanhood

; the work Contos transantropológicos (2018), by Atena Beauvoir,

which presents texts in which the characters do not recognize themselves in their own bodies; and, by Amara

Moira, Neca + 20 poemetos travessos (2021), the short story "O que eu mais queria," published in the

anthology Coronárias (2022), and Neca (2024), a novel written in bajubá, or "pajubá" - the "language of the

bichas," as the author explains - whose plot revolves around the sexual stories of a trans woman.

Of this list of fictional works gathered here, few were written by transgender people. They are: De

trans pra frente (2017), by writer, professor, researcher, and multi-artist Dodi Leal; Contos

transantropológicos (2018), by writer, professor, and philosopher Atena Beauvoir; and Neca + 20 poemetos

travessos (2021), "O que eu mais queria," a short story published in the anthology Coronárias (2022), and

Neca (2024), by Amara Moira, writer, literary critic, and researcher.

Despite the low volume of fictional and poetic works with trans protagonists written by transgender

people, there is a significant volume of autobiographical works by such authors, as is the case, for example,

with the books A queda para o alto (1982), by Anderson Herzer, possibly the first autobiographical work

produced by a trans writer to be published in Brazil; Meu corpo, minha prisão: autobiografia de um

transexual (1985), by Loris Ádreon; the works of João W. Nery, namely Erro de pessoa: Joana ou João?

(1985), Viagem solitária: memórias de um transexual trinta anos depois (2011), Velhice transviada:

memórias e reflexões (2019), and also Vidas trans: a coragem de existir, which also includes texts by Amara

Moira, Márcia Rocha, and T. Brant; and E se eu fosse puta (2016), by Amara Moira.

There is also, in the field of intertextuality, the production of Laerte, a cartoonist and trans woman

who addresses the theme of dissident bodies in the artistic work she produces, as observed below:

Excerpt from the poem "Poesia travada," by Dodi Leal. De trans pra frente. São Paulo: Patuá, 2017, p. 64.

Scientia International Journal for Linguistics, Letters and Arts8 of 9

Equally intertextual is the work of trans artists such as Linn da Quebrada, an actress, composer, and

singer who, in her verses, addresses transsexuality, as in the song "Mulher," which stages nocturnal

streetwalking and affirms the figure of a feminine "trava" through bodily signs, desire, and gender self-

assertion.

When moving through literary productions that feature transsexual characters prominently, it is worth

emphasizing that, in fiction, the number of cisgender authors is greater; the production of trans writers, in the

sample considered, has broader scope in the biographical/autobiographical field. It is also noticeable that

transsexuality is approached from the point of view of a body initially associated with the masculine that

nevertheless identifies as feminine, with few opposite occurrences, such as the one observed in Aretusa Von's

short story "Triunfo dos pelos" (2000).

In the field of nonfiction, there is the work of João W. Nery, the first trans man to undergo gender-

affirming genital surgery in Brazil, and the book Thammy: nadando contra a corrente (2015), written by

author Marcia Zanellato, which presents the trajectory of councilman Thammy Gretchen, a trans man who

has been highly popular in digital media since adolescence, a period when he became famous because of his

association with his mother, the Brazilian singer Gretchen.

Regarding the themes undertaken, the lives of trans characters are constantly marked by violence,

intolerance, abandonment, rejection, forced migrations, physical and psychological illness, melancholy,

incomprehension, and death. In general, these characters are relegated to prostitution, sometimes managing

to survive through work in the arts, acting as singers, actresses, vedettes, dancers, and other occupations.

3. CONCLUSION

The censorship suffered by Cassandra Rios when publishing her works highlights the resistance, by a

significant niche of society, to the existence of dissident bodies. This resistance is linked to a worldview in

which forms of living and acting conceived as utopian would have no place, because they imagine themselves

and their surroundings in ways different from those established by State, Church, and Family, a triad that, as

briefly sketched here, forged the molds of what can or cannot be accepted within the domain of one's own

body and identity.

Despite the historical regressions suffered over time, which resulted in repression and attempts to

control bodies considered dissident, the presence of trans bodies in literary narratives persists in an

increasingly consistent and constant way. There has been a significant increase in publications that include

not only trans characters, but also trans women and men authors, which contributes significantly to breaking

stereotypes consolidated in 20th-century narratives and to deepening the forms of representation of these

characters.

Scientia International Journal for Linguistics, Letters and Arts9 of 9

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