I Heard Her Call My Name

Lucy Sante has often felt like an outsider. Born in Belgium to conservative Catholic working-class parents, she was transplanted to the United States without ever entirely settling here. But a feeling of home finally arrived when she moved to New York City in the early 1970s amidst her fellow bohemians. Through those electric years, some of her friends would die young, from drugs and AIDS, and others would become jarringly famous. Lucy flirted with both fates, on her way to building a glittering career as a writer. But she could never shake that feeling.When she was finally ready, Lucy decided to confront the façade she’d been presenting to everyone, including herself, over these years. I Heard Her Call My Name is the story of that confrontation, of a life with a missing piece that with transition, falls into place. This a memoir of grace and wit that parses the issues of gender identity and far beyond with unbounding humility and hope.

An astonishing, once-in-a-lifetime achievement, as two stories thread into one, from losing yourself in the lights, the sounds, the eyes of others, to the miraculous discovery of the language with which you can put yourself back together, Radical, humble, and wise, Sante’s account of discovery is the most generous of gifts — a book to treasure, and a memoir that will enter the canon of twenty-first-century greats, I've admired the utter clarity and authority of Lucy Sante's work for years, and I was deeply moved by how she tunneled through the specificity of her experiences to create this vivid, encompassing, and compassionate book, A generous, fearlessly revealing book, full of heart. Lucy Sante brings a reader through her transition, a story that moves across continents, time, and discovery. It is revitalising. Sante’s dedication to truth asks beautifully honest questions: Who deserves to be a woman? What do we contain? What is it to live, survive, to thrive? This celebration of womanhood is fresh air you will want to breathe in deeply

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 (for album notes), an Infinity Award from the International Center of Photography, and Guggenheim and Cullman fellowships. She recently retired after 24 years teaching at Bard College.