Her memoir is moving for many reasons, but primarily for its observations about aging and vanity, as seen through the separated colors of a prismatic lens ... Vividly written ... One of the things that make this memoir convincing is that it is, on a certain level, unconvincing. Sante is a writer with a lot of peripheral vision ... It’s a story worth following, to watch her ring the bells that will still ring. Her sharpness and sanity, moodiness and skepticism are the appeal.
With its focus on gender transition, this is a timely but timeless memoir ... A poignant but forceful portrait of a life liberated from shame and fear ... The book reads like one lengthy confession ... This structural choice carries the reader through the memoir’s bleakest moments. We’re better able to pay unflinching attention and absorb the bitterness of Sante’s life without any reassurance or handholding on the part of Sante. It’s also her frank and inviting voice that hooks the reader.
Arresting ... At times accompanying Sante on the many U-turns and dead ends she leads the reader into can be exhausting: Just as you think she’s finding resolution, there is another caveat.
Reading this book is a joy. Sante is funny and warm, and her new life (or her newfound ownership of her life) gives her journey, in retrospect, a rosy tint. But Sante is aware that a transition of gender identity isn’t as relatively comfortable for everyone ... Has much to say about the trans journey and will undoubtedly become a standard for those in need of guidance.
Candid ... Yet one never forgets that she is a writer—a prolific critic, historian, artist, and scholar who has been honing her craft for decades ... Compelling ... A sustained and joyful exhale.
What makes I Heard Her Call My Name extraordinary aren’t the events Sante describes but the way she describes them. Her writing remains as perceptive, elegant, and striking as ever, and furthermore it is fearlessly honest—a quality that often seems almost as rare as Sante-style bohemians ... A revealing memoir, yet a resolutely private one as well, concerned only with documenting how this life and transition have felt to a single, idiosyncratic human being.
In a work that is otherwise marked by clarity and self-awareness, there is something willful about these efforts to avoid appearing 'defensive' ... The book is most powerful as a depiction of the agony of suppression.
The memoir concludes with a justifiable expression of hope that the author’s experiences might be instructive to those seeking to understand transition and the personal and social complexities it can pose. An absorbing analysis of a long-standing search for identity in writing and life.
