I Heard Her Call My Name: A Memoir of Transition - Hardcover

by Lucy Sante (Author)An iconic writer's lapidary memoir of a life spent pursuing a dream of artistic truth while evading the truth of her own gender identity, until, finally, she turned to face who she really was “Reading this book is a joy. Sante is funny and warm . . . I Heard Her Call My Name has much to say about the trans journey and will undoubtedly become a standard for those in need of guidance. But the book speaks to a wider audience, too: for anyone who needs to break out of their self-imposed ‘prison of denial,’ as Sante puts it, or to stop punishing themselves for wanting what they want.” - The Washington Post “A timely but timeless memoir . . . At its heart, I Heard Her Call My Name is a poignant but forceful portrait of a life liberated from shame and fear . . . Emblematic of someone who has straddled cultures, languages, and genders, Sante’s bold devotion to complexity and clarity makes this an exemplary memoir. It is a clarion call to live one’s most authentic life.” - The Boston Globe “Deeply moving, often surprisingly hilarious . . . [Sante is] an exceptional prosaist . . . One of the memoir’s most poignant aspects is the way that Sante compares and contrasts her gender transition with the sort of transitioning she had to do “as an immigrant child becoming acculturated in the United States.” - Air Mail For a long time, Lucy Sante felt unsure of her place. Born in Belgium, the only child of conservative working-class Catholic parents who transplanted their little family to the United States, she felt at home only when she moved to New York City in the early 1970s and found her people among a band of fellow bohemians. Some would die young, to drugs and AIDS, and some would become jarringly famous. Sante flirted with both fates, on her way to building an estimable career as a writer. But she still felt like her life a performance. She was presenting a façade, even to herself. Sante's memoir braids together two threads of personal narrative: the arc of her life, and her recent step-by-step transition to a place of inner and outer alignment. Sante brings a loving irony to her account of her unsteady first steps; there was much she found she still needed to learn about being a woman after some sixty years cloaked in a man's identity, in a man's world. A marvel of grace and empathy, I Heard Her Call My Name parses with great sensitivity many issues that touch our lives deeply, of gender identity and far beyond. Author Biography LUCY SANTE is the author of Low Life, Evidence, The Factory of Facts, Kill All Your Darlings, Folk Photography, The Other Paris, Maybe the People Would Be the Times, and Nineteen Reservoirs. Her awards include a Whiting Writers Award, an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Grammy Award (for album notes), an Infinity Award from the International Center of Photography, and Guggenheim and Cullman Center fellowships. She recently retired after 24 years teaching at Bard College.