“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.
