Jovanna Cardoso - Bajubá odara

2021, Brazil, Jovanna Baby Cardoso da Silva, Jovanna Cardoso, Portuguese,

Original title: "Bajubá odara" by Jovanna Baby Cardoso da Silva.

“Bajubá odara”, published in 2021 by Jovanna Baby Cardoso da Silva, stands as one of the most important literary and historical works documenting the trajectory of the trans and travesti movement in Brazil. More than a simple linguistic study, it is a living archive of voices that have long been silenced and marginalized. In this book, Jovanna Baby, founder of the Movimento Trans do Brasil and a pioneer of trans activism in Latin America, revisits and expands her earlier work “Diálogo das Bonecas”, published in 1992. That earlier publication was the first dictionary of bajubá, the secret language created and used by Brazilian travestis to communicate in a world that criminalized and excluded them. The new edition, Bajubá odara, not only preserves this invaluable cultural code but also adds a rich historical and autobiographical dimension, exploring the evolution of the travesti movement from the early twentieth century to the early 1990s.

 

The word bajubá itself originates from the mixture of African Bantu and Yoruba languages that were brought to Brazil by enslaved people and reinterpreted by Black queer communities. Within the travesti world, bajubá became both a shield and a song, a coded way of survival and solidarity that protected speakers from police violence, social stigma, and daily humiliation. Jovanna Baby’s dictionary captured that living language in print for the first time, giving it legitimacy and preserving it for future generations. By doing so, she helped to transform what was once whispered in fear into a shared cultural heritage. In Bajubá odara, she goes beyond the lexicon, showing how each expression carries layers of history, pain, resistance, and joy. Her writing makes clear that bajubá is not merely a collection of slang terms but a system of identity and affirmation born out of oppression.

 

The book also presents a deep and vivid account of the travesti political movement that emerged in Brazil between 1910 and 1992. Jovanna recalls the brutal conditions faced by travestis throughout the twentieth century, when laws such as the infamous Article 59 of the Penal Code, known as the “Law of Vagrancy,” were used to arrest and humiliate them simply for existing in public spaces. She writes about the nights in police stations, the raids known as Operação Tarântula, and the countless acts of violence that shaped her generation. Yet, amid the terror, she chronicles the courage that grew in resistance to it. Through her words, readers encounter the birth of the first organized collectives of travestis, including the Associação Damas da Noite, founded in 1979 in Vitória after a wave of arrests of sex workers. From those small beginnings came a network of associations and national movements that would forever change the landscape of Brazilian LGBTQIAPN+ politics.

 

Jovanna Baby’s role in this transformation was central. After Damas da Noite, she helped create ASTRAL, the Associação de Travestis e Liberados, in 1992, which became the first exclusively trans-led organization in the world. From there, the movement expanded rapidly. In 1993, the first National Meeting of Travestis was held in Rio de Janeiro, and a year later, the network RENATA (Rede Nacional de Travestis) was born. In 1995, during the third National Meeting, ANTRA, the Articulação Nacional de Travestis e Transexuais, was founded, marking a historic consolidation of the movement. That same year, the first Trans March took place in Rio de Janeiro, as 250 travestis walked from the Candelária to the Cinelândia to protest police violence. Jovanna recalls that moment with emotion, describing how it coincided with a Catholic procession and symbolized a powerful act of spiritual and political defiance.

 

Bajubá odara also pays homage to the many women who built this movement alongside Jovanna. Figures such as Beatriz Senegal, Raquel Barbosa, Jossy Silva, and Monique du Baviera appear throughout her narrative as foundational pillars. The book acknowledges that these women, most of them Black and from the Brazilian Northeast, carried the weight of a double or even triple marginalization, facing racism, transphobia, and class prejudice all at once. Jovanna’s writing insists on the importance of remembering them, not as secondary figures, but as the architects of a social revolution. In her view, the movement’s early decades were sustained by the hands and hearts of Black travestis who refused to be erased from Brazilian history.

 

In 2010, Jovanna Baby created FONATRANS, the Fórum Nacional de Travestis e Transexuais Negras e Negros, continuing her lifelong commitment to centering Black trans voices. In Bajubá odara, she reflects on the persistence of racism even within LGBTQIAPN+ spaces, observing that the leadership of trans movements has too often been dominated by white or light-skinned people. FONATRANS emerged as a corrective to that imbalance, advocating for a more inclusive and anti-racist trans politics. Jovanna reminds readers that 78 percent of trans people murdered in Brazil are Black, a statistic that makes her mission tragically urgent. Through her organization and her writing, she demands recognition for the contribution of Black trans women to every major social and legal victory achieved in Brazil, from the right to a chosen name to the recognition of gender identity.

 

Reading Bajubá odara is not a passive experience. It invites readers to question the narratives that have defined Brazilian modernity and to listen to the voices of those who have been systematically silenced. The book’s combination of linguistic analysis, personal testimony, and historical documentation makes it a unique contribution to both literature and activism. Jovanna’s prose is direct and uncompromising, filled with the rhythms of spoken language and the spirit of collective memory. She weaves together humor and pain, resistance and tenderness, showing that the history of travestis is also the history of Brazil itself. Her narrative is one of survival and creativity, in which language becomes a tool for freedom and a form of love.

 

More than three decades after publishing Diálogo das Bonecas, Jovanna Baby remains one of the most important figures in the global trans movement. She continues to fight for dignity, equality, and visibility, reminding everyone that the achievements of the present were built on the courage of those who risked everything in the past. Bajubá odara is both a testimony and a manifesto, a document that ensures that the voices of the travestis who shaped Brazilian history will never again be erased. It is a celebration of language, memory, and the indestructible beauty of those who have always turned marginalization into strength. Through her words, Jovanna Baby teaches that to speak bajubá is to speak freedom, and that freedom, once named, can never again be silenced.

Available via Amazon

and midianinja.org

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