Alana S. Portero is a guest this week on ‘What are you reading’, the EL PAÍS books podcast. The author of ‘The Bad Custom’, a book that has become an editorial phenomenon that now has more than 20 editions, talks to Berna González Harbor about a success that surprised her, the hostile Madrid it reflects and how the story of a trans girl has become universal. “Masculinity always calls its soldiers,” he warns, warning of the danger of regression in social progress.
Portero, who has described and known the lives of prostitutes up close, believes that the abolition debate “usually takes place without prostitutes” and is unrealistic. “They always want to take them off the street and put them to scrub,” he says, adding, “I don’t see the difference between breaking your back scrubbing or making a living hand-to-hand.” “Taking away their jobs means taking them out of your life without their permission.”
EL PAÍS’s genre correspondent, Isabel Valdés, comments in this episode on Portero’s “poetic pedagogy” and Jordi Amat provides Babelia’s literary advice.
- The Cromwell Trilogy by Hillary Mantell.
- The Jungle Sky, by Elaine Vilar Madruga.
- Pilgrims of Beauty, by María Belmonte.
- Ana, no, by Agustín Gómez Arcos.
- The Unworthy, by Agustina Bazterrica.
- Nobody Was Waiting for Me Here, by Noelia Ramírez.
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