Book Review: I Heard Her Call My Name

This review kicks off our newest feature in the blog, book reviews. It’s written by Ben Terral of Pegasus Books. Anyone reading this blog can also submit a review of their favorite book. Send your review to editor@rockridge.org where it will be reviewed and edited before being published in the blog.

by Ben Terral, Pegasus Books

The wildly talented and versatile writer Lucy Sante's most recent book, I Heard Her Call My Name, is a memoir of transitioning from Luc, the male name under which she functioned until her mid-sixties, to Lucy. Par for the course with Sante, the writing is sublime, filled with artful turns of phrase and droll asides. 

I Heard Her Call My Name delves deep into the gender confusion which Sante describes actively suppressing well into her sixties. Chapters on the period leading up to and including her gender transition alternate with sections on earlier parts of her life, from childhood in Belgium and New Jersey through wild times in Manhattan in the 1970s and '80s. 

Sante participated in the first-wave NYC punk and renegade arts scenes, running around with artistically inclined movers and shakers including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jim Jarmusch, Sara Driver, and Darryl Pinkney. Her descriptions of the cash-strapped but creatively fecund milieus in and around what became known as Alphabet City are alone worth the book's cover price. 

I Heard Her Call My Name charts the daunting process of transitioning to a freer, more fully realized life as Lucy, and coming out to family, friends, and acquaintances. Clocking in at 226 pages, a manageable length for even the most internet-damaged attention spans, the book inspires empathy and solidarity through its nuanced, powerful, and accessible account of Sante's transformation from Luc to Lucy. Sante concludes, "I certainly hope that my story will be read by people who need to see that gender dysphoria, expressed in childhood or adolescence, is not a passing fancy that will evaporate when the social climate changes." So do I.

This book review was written by Ben Terral of Pegasus Books and is available at Pegasus Books or your favorite library.