I Heard Her Call My Name: A Memoir of Transition
(Penguin, $27)
In her latest book in a distinguished career, scholar and critic Lucy Sante “turns to a subject she knows best despite every attempt to evade accepting it: herself,” said Lauren LeBlanc in The Boston Globe. Three years ago, having lived to age 66 as Luc Sante, the author of Low Life and The Other Paris sent an email to friends in which she declared that her desire to live as a woman was and had been “the consuming furnace at the center of my life.” Her new memoir tells the story of her ensuing transition, interweaving that account with a look back at her immigrant childhood, Catholic upbringing, and discovery of the New York City literary–creative community that sustained her throughout adulthood. “At its heart, I Heard Her Call My Name is a poignant portrait of a life liberated from shame and fear.”
“The book wrangles with a central question: Why now?” said Megan Milks in 4Columns. Sante concedes that answering is hard, given that she “knew” since childhood that she wished to change genders.
But she describes her breakthrough occurring in early 2021 when she began importing old photos of herself into FaceApp and experienced “one shock of recognition after another” as the software enabled her to see what she would have looked like as a woman or girl. Within two weeks of seeing the first of those images, some of which are reproduced in the book, she came out to her therapist, her partner, and closest friends.
“Apart from Sante’s age, there isn’t anything particularly unusual to her transition story,” said Laura Miller in Slate. She tells us about the physical effects of taking hormones, the construction of a new wardrobe, and her decision’s impact on her relationship with a long-term partner. What distinguishes her account is its candor. “A paradox of this breed of confessional writing, when it’s done as well as Sante does it, is that the more precisely and frankly the writer describes an individual experience, the easier it becomes for readers to recognize it as similar to dilemmas of their own.” Every reader will find something to relate to in this “extraordinary” book.