Eva Carieri’s new book Travaglio. Genesi di una donna transgender (Travaglio: The Genesis of a Transgender Woman) is a raw and unfiltered account of intolerance, drugs, sex, and violence in an Italy that has rarely been spoken about with such honesty. It is a narrative that does not shy away from the darker corners of life but instead confronts them, showing how the search for love can persist even when everything seems hostile and unforgiving. Beyond fear and beyond prejudice, Carieri writes about survival, self-discovery, and the fragile yet resilient pursuit of dignity.
This book comes after her 2022 autobiography Eva. Il prezzo dell’ambizione. La ricerca dell’amore nonostante tutto, oltre il pregiudizio (Eva. The Price of Ambition. The search for love despite everything, beyond prejudice). In that first work, she chronicled her personal journey, balancing ambition with the costs of being true to herself. The new book can be read as a continuation and deepening of that story, taking readers further into the formative experiences and struggles that shaped her into the woman she is today.
Eva Carieri was born in Palermo in 1980, a city that gave her little in the way of protection or acceptance. Growing up in an environment where violence and ridicule against gay and transgender people were rampant, she faced the hostility of society and even of her own family. In her 2023 interview for The Heroines of My Life, she recalled how trans women and gay men were humiliated and sometimes even beaten with baseball bats for sport. Writing became for her a form of liberation, a way to free herself from the psychological oppression of her past. Travaglio builds on this act of liberation, not only recounting the injustices she endured but also reclaiming her voice as a witness to a silenced Italy.
Carieri’s life has always been multifaceted. Before she became an author, she broke barriers as a transgender model, challenging the taboos of the fashion world. In 2016, she posed for Globus magazine in Croatia, a moment considered groundbreaking for transgender visibility in European media. She later expanded her career into acting, hosting, and blogging, writing for international outlets about medicine and surgery, subjects that have long fascinated her. She continues to thrive as an artistic personality in Bologna, where she hosts a Fashion Web TV and participates in cultural events.
In The Heroines of My Life interview, Carieri spoke openly about her early experiences on the catwalk, her uneasy coexistence with cisgender models, and the way she carved out her identity in the nightlife of Bologna. She explained how the choice of her name, Eva, was both a challenge to established fame and an assertion of her right to exist as a unique figure. Her candor about surgeries, the relentless pursuit of a self-image that matched her inner identity, and her reflections on aging showed a woman who has risked, suffered, and yet continued to create.Travaglio is not a glamorous book, even though its author is undeniably a fashion icon. It is instead a testimony to the lived experiences of those who are pushed to the margins. Carieri does not present herself as a victim but as a survivor who has endured poverty, rejection, exploitation, and violence, yet still found the courage to speak of love. The word “genesis” in the subtitle is significant: it suggests not only a beginning but also a rebirth, the act of becoming oneself despite everything that conspires against it.
The themes of prejudice and exclusion are central, but equally important is the insistence on love. For Carieri, love is not an easy or naive idea but a hard-won truth, something that can be found even after betrayal and pain. In her interview, she described how the presence of one man, Raffaele, gave her a sense of family she had been denied. That enduring bond, even transformed from romance into friendship, stands as proof that love remains possible.
What makes Travaglio stand out is not only the personal narrative but the way it reflects a broader social reality. Carieri writes about an Italy that rarely makes headlines, an Italy where intolerance festers in silence, where transgender women are both desired and despised, and where the struggle for recognition continues. Her story is both individual and collective, a mirror held up to a society that has yet to fully reckon with its prejudices.
As an artist, Carieri embodies resilience. As a writer, she exposes truths that many would rather ignore. With her second book, she cements her place not only as a cultural figure but as a chronicler of the hidden lives and painful realities of transgender women in Italy. Travaglio. Genesi di una donna transgender is therefore more than a memoir. It is a denunciation, a testimony, and ultimately a declaration of existence. Eva Carieri’s voice, once confined by shame and silence, now speaks with clarity and courage, offering readers a story that is as much about survival as it is about the possibility of becoming whole.
Available via Amazon
Photo via Heroines of My Life
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