“MA: Eu. Mulher. Trans” by Marcela Bosa is not simply a memoir about transition, it is an intimate, humorous, and often disarmingly honest journey into the life of a woman who always existed, even when the mirror insisted on telling a different story. Marcela was always Marcela, yet until the age of thirty-one, what she saw reflected back at her did not match who she was inside. The book is born from the decision to stop negotiating with herself and to finally become who she truly was, a decision that leads her through a path that is far from easy or consistently joyful, but deeply transformative.
With a blend of irreverence, logic, and undeniable charisma, Marcela narrates her story as if she were sitting across from the reader at a café, inviting us to know her not as a concept or a headline, but as a person. She introduces us to her family, to friends who appeared and sometimes disappeared along the way, and to the rigid social structures that try to keep people neatly confined. The book makes it painfully clear how difficult it is to escape those invisible restraints, and at the same time how profoundly rewarding that escape can be.
Born in southern Brazil and raised as a boy in a traditional, conservative family, Marcela grew up as the middle child among three sisters. This position shaped much of her internal world, as she was surrounded by femininity while being denied access to it. Even before she understood herself as a trans woman, she was deeply fascinated by what was labeled the feminine universe, an attraction that was never allowed to fully surface. In the book, she openly shares her doubts, her longings, and the quiet daily moments that shaped her, offering what feel like small but powerful lessons in how to coexist respectfully with trans people, not through preaching, but through lived experience.
Each chapter reveals a new layer of her maturation. We follow her academic path through a degree in Physics, her success in passing a highly competitive public exam to enter a prestigious bank, and the personal milestones that include marriage and divorce. The narrative moves naturally into therapy and finally into gender affirmation, showing how identity is not a single event but a process. Marcela writes about the joy of freedom and the brutal impact of prejudice with equal clarity, exposing how transfobia can damage careers, crush dreams, and in many cases, end lives altogether.One of the book’s most striking qualities is its humor, which never feels out of place. Marcela recounts family gatherings with sharp wit, confesses to the only thefts of her life, stealing the sweets her mother used to make, and even tells stories about surgeries on her leg with a lightness that disarms the reader. Yet beneath this humor lies a deep loneliness. She writes candidly about how isolating it can be to accept oneself and how devastating it is to lose one’s family while they are still alive, simply because of blind and irrational prejudice.
The narrative eventually takes us across the world to Thailand, where Marcela underwent her gender reassignment surgery. This part of the book is particularly powerful because it strips away the illusion that social privilege guarantees safety or acceptance. Even as a white, highly educated bank manager, occupying the role of general manager at a branch of one of the largest banks in the country, Marcela shows how all of that becomes strangely irrelevant once society reduces her to being a trans woman. Her presence in such a position causes discomfort and disbelief, as if competence and leadership were incompatible with her identity.
Throughout the book, Marcela presents her struggles, hesitations, mistakes, and victories with remarkable sincerity. She does not write as someone delivering a finished lesson, but as someone extending a hand. The tone feels as though she is introducing herself to a future close friend, or perhaps a confidant who will understand her without judgment. By the time the final pages are reached, the reader truly does feel that they know Marcela as well as she knows herself, exactly as she promises.
A devoted pet mother, speaker, writer, filmmaker, and banker, Marcela defines herself with coherence rather than labels. Writing and cinema became her chosen tools to tell her own story and the stories of other trans people, contributing to broader understanding and to the normalization of trans lives beyond stereotypes and fear. She uses narrative as a form of activism, one rooted in humanity rather than slogans.
Currently proudly zerogamic, she humorously describes herself as searching for someone to go to the movies with and to take Lisa and Myle for a walk. Her sense of humor, which she openly admits is questionable, runs throughout the book, supported by a series of life stories that often feel worthy of a stand up routine. “MA: Eu. Mulher. Trans” is ultimately a testament to resilience, authenticity, and the quiet courage required to live honestly in a world that often resists such truth.
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