Too Much a Woman: Narrating Transsexuality in Mario Mendoza’s Lady Masacre

This article explores how Lady Masacre (Mario Mendoza, Colombia, 2013) constructs the narrative of a transsexual woman, Gabriela López, as a way to reinforce views on non-heteronormative life that perpetuate the dominant values expected from marginalised communities. In reading this novel, I argue that Mendoza reduces Gabriela to a pendular existence between being an autonomous woman and the femme fatal role that eventually defines her. In so doing, Lady Masacre humanises the men who take part in the reconstruction of her story while showing why Gabriela feels the need to pass as a cis woman. In this way, while the novel offers a glimpse into the contradictions of trans lives, desires, and challenges in contemporary Colombia, it also traps Gabriela within practices imposed by respectability politics.