Maria Clara and I first met when I was an English-language teacher, translator, and scholar and she was an undergraduate scholar working in social movements and political articulations in Brazil. I had long admired her work, as one of the most prominent voices in a budding generation of Brazilian travesti thinkers, before she became my student. From a young age, she was determined to walk a path geared towards building transnational bridges and carrying out the political-pedagogical project she so beautifully lays out in this book. Supporting her in developing her language skills to fulfil her purpose was one of the highlights of my teaching career.
When Pedagogias das travestilidades was published, I knew I wanted to read it, learn from it, and eventually translate it into English. That aligned with Maria Clara’s goal of making sure that as many people as possible had access to the teachings and strategizing employed by progressive social movements in Brazil, and, more specifically, by the Travesti and Transsexual Women’s Movement and the scholars who came from it.
Three years on, after a lot of translating, rethinking, editing, and expanding of the already-excellent Brazilian Portuguese original, this book is being published simultaneously in English and German. Along the way, we thought that some of our conversations—from exchanges about the translation process to issues that kept arising in the academic sphere, which informed the updated text—warranted accompanying the book. We hope it will further enrich the text for readers, scholars, and translators alike.
Natália: Can you talk a little bit about your relationship with languages and how that has influenced the way your thinking has developed?
Maria Clara: Not long ago, I went back to taking Spanish classes, and I currently work at a global institution where I use multiple languages in my day-to-day life. Since my work is deeply rooted in transnational feminism, speaking Spanish has become essential too. During my last Spanish class, the teacher asked us about when we first realized that we were Latin American—because, very often in Brazil, we don’t see ourselves as part of Latin America. That question made me pause and reflect. It took me back to the moment when I started to pay more attention to the words that, in some way, represent me and tell a story about me. That turning point came when I realized that the term ‘travesti’ had a very specific meaning in countries like Brazil. From that moment on, I began understanding that this term meant different things across Latin America.
It also carries a lot of similarities—positive and negative—especially related to gender, nationality, and race. When I started to notice more closely that the words we use to identify ourselves are not just random or disconnected from history—each word carries a legacy—that’s when I was able to go a bit deeper into my relationship with language as something that has the power to do things in the world. I am not just naming myself, I am producing meaning.
I am a Brazilian travesti, but I am also part of a larger travesti community, especially in South America. Realizing this was really important because it helped me start to pay more attention to the whole region. I was able to better understand the importance of building alliances with people who share similar political identities. Nowadays, it is very clear that we must create opportunities for meaningful exchanges across borders, not only in relation to political agendas and social mobilization but also in terms of the more personal aspects of our lives. I think we need to hang out, we need to spend more time together to learn more about each other, we need spaces that can foster these alliances.
Natália: Speaking of regional debates, some people who call themselves decolonial scholars claim that we shouldn’t be publishing and writing in the language of empire, like English or French, even though they are publishing in Portuguese and Spanish. What do you say to that?
Maria Clara: In a time when we need more transnational solidarity and a shared lexicon to respond to what is happening in the world and to strategize, I don’t think it is useful to waste time wondering if it is good or not to publish this book, which has had such a great impact in Brazil, into other languages, whatever they might be. I would love to see my book published in Spanish as well. In as many languages as possible. If we want to talk about decolonial or anti-colonial language, maybe we would be discussing the possibility of having these books translated into Indigenous languages. So, what I am paying attention to right now, as this book is being published in German and English, is: who is going to step up and read scholars from the Global South and actually learn from us?
Natália: Because the excuse that this scholarship is inaccessible because they can’t understand Brazilian Portuguese is gone, right?
Maria Clara: Yes (laughs).
Natália: I remember you telling me about an exchange you had in France with a Francophone trans woman of African origin. Would you mind sharing that story again, including some of your takeaways?
Maria Clara: The first time I went to Paris, a Brazilian travesti friend invited several trans women to a dinner. In the middle of a conversation, I said something like, ‘Well, as a travesti, I …’ and one of them immediately interrupted me mid-sentence and said, ‘Please don’t say that—you are not a travesti, you are a trans woman.’ She said that in English, and that was the only moment she spoke in English. She had been speaking French until then. She was not trying to be shady; she was truly concerned. It ended up being a funny situation, and I explained our point of view to her.
It was very interesting to me how this word can trigger so many different reactions. So it is always a political decision to self-identify as travesti in front of people. I never know how people are going to react. Despite that, we feel that it is crucial to establish this positionality. The term ‘travesti’ predates the introduction of the term ‘transgender’ in our territories.
It is especially important to identify as such when talking to people from abroad because of the history it carries. In Brazil, in Argentina, there are whole histories attached to it. I am not referring to the way I see myself just in an individual sense; I am also inscribing myself within a broader collective history, demarcating that I come from a people, and this is what I want to show with Pedagogies of Travesti Liberation. In Brazil, just saying ‘trans movement’ is not truly representative of our history. If I don’t name travestis alongside and separately, I am erasing from history people who have been fundamental to the movement.
Sometimes, academic literature from the Global North mentions ‘travesti’ merely as an example—a footnote, a token of ‘proof’ that the scholar is being ‘decolonial’—without offering a more grounded reference to where travestis come from, live, and make social change. We can’t be just a footnote. Gender diversity is an indissociable part of Brazil’s formation, from before colonization to the present day.
Natália: Can you talk about how this translation process has been for you? What does it feel like to see your book in English?
Maria Clara: It has been very rewarding. I must acknowledge the fact that not many travestis get to publish a book at all. Few have had the opportunity to see their works translated into other languages. It is, of course, an individual accomplishment, but it is a win for all travestis. Now we can reach a much broader audience—many of whom, I am assuming, won’t be very familiar with what the book is saying. It’s one thing for me to discuss transgender rights and it’s another to talk about travesti and trans politics from Latin America. There are similarities, but, for me, it is fundamental to acknowledge that we speak from different positionalities.
This was a process not only of translation but also of editing, rewriting, and expanding. I wrote the original in Brazilian Portuguese in 2020, right after finishing my undergraduate degree. I was twenty-four, still finding myself, as well as beginning to become the scholar I am today. Going back to this monograph, it almost feels like it was written by a different person. Not to say that I wouldn’t write what I did, but, nowadays, I am a lot more theoretically prepared to explain why it is important to look at how travestis—and the LGBTQ+ community, more broadly—have been questioning and offering new ways of understanding sexuality, gender, identity, democracy, and citizenship.
Natália: In translation, we talk about untranslatables—concepts and words that are impossible to translate into other languages. Some think that this is a silly idea, that we are all a part of the human experience and that everything is ultimately translatable across cultures. But, interestingly, around 2017, you created a sound piece called ‘Travesti’ não se traduz! All but the title of the soundbite was translated into English when it was included in a LUX Online Exhibition called Notes on Travecacceleration. In the piece, you argue that ‘travesti’ should not be translated, that no other single term, for instance ‘transvestite’, should be used to try to represent the experience of Brazilian travestis. One funny thing about ‘Travesti’ não se traduz! is that, if we take away the quotation marks and translate this sentence into English, it can mean both ‘you shouldn’t translate travesti’ and ‘travestis don’t translate themselves’. In the introduction to Pedagogies of Travesti Liberation, you mention that you are not trying to define who travestis are or offering a closed definition of this identity. Is ‘travesti’, thus, untranslatable? Can you talk more about these ideas and your refusal to define ‘travesti’?
Maria Clara: Here, I have to acknowledge that, in Brazil, there is a broader discussion around circumscribing ‘travesti’ to a gender identity category. When we don’t translate ‘travesti’, it is not just an editorial decision—it is also about carrying travesti history into other languages and cultures. There are travestis in Brazil that understand themselves as a part of a third gender; others see themselves as part of an expanded category of ‘woman’. What I want people to take away from reading the book is that travestility, or travestilidade—the state of being a travesti—is an invitation to embrace complexity, to be affected by complexity. The word complexidade in Portuguese is often used to refer to something difficult or hard to deal with, but it can also mean ‘layered.’ I am saying this because sometimes we are so desperate to find definitions, we end up producing closed categories that oversimplify reality, which can be very counterproductive. What I am saying is that travestis push us to go beyond surface-level understandings. If someone is more concerned about nailing down a definition of who or what travestis are than understanding the potential of the political-pedagogical praxis proposed by travestis, maybe this book is not for them.
Being a travesti demands practice. It is not an isolated process of self-definition, it is not an individualizing act of self-identification. Rather, it is deeply connected to a political sense of identity—rooted in community building, movement organizing, surviving, and thriving. That is why the title of this book is Pedagogies of Travesti Liberation—‘pedagogies’, in the plural.
Even our praxis is multiple. The focus here is on honouring the historical and political praxis that travestis have forged.
This conversation was carried out virtually and in English, on 4 April 2025. Maria Clara was in Brazil, and Natália in the United States.
This text was first published in the publication Pedagogies of Travesti Liberation (Berlin: HKW & Archive Books, 2025), 23–31. A German edition is also available.