Literary review of a memoir of a transgender man’s journey to find love and acceptance.
Dr. Avi Ben-Zeev’s memoir, “Calling My Deadname Home”, is an extraordinary and heart wrenching journey through time to reconnect and let go of his former, female self, Talia. Growing up in a working-class family in Israel, Dr. Ben-Zeev only just finished high school, yet now holds a PhD in Cognitive Psychology, an expert in stereotype threat and implicit bias, he is a writer and professor.
This is a beautiful, heart wrenching gift of a book. There are books that enter our life and lodge themselves directly into our heart with their brevity, love, and honesty. This was one of them.
“Calling My Deadname Home” is told in three parts – early transition, later transition, and Talia’s story. There is a sense that Talia was in constant flight from the imprisonment of her self and her past and only when Avi reconciles this sense of imprisonment and the sacrifice that Talia is safely freed.
At no point will Avi or Talia sacrifice their authenticity, the driving force within themselves to act in what seems to be a just way. We see this in Talia’s determination to avoid her mandatory service in the IDF.
Their journey is one that shows us we are not just one aspect of our personality, one traumatic event, or one action we regret. We are all of these things and none of them at the same time as there’s always an opportunity for forgiveness and love. “Calling My Deadname Home” is as unflinchingly honest as its writer as he moves in the world. There are themes of self-loathing, particularly in regard to the sexual assaults of young Talia and the lasting traumas.
A beautiful, heart wrenching gift of a book.
Avi writes with such honesty that Talia’s loss of self and pain is palpable on the page.
There is sex, some of it kinky, and I feel like straight vanilla folks will view the sex as “graphic” simply because the bodies doing it are not cisgender. There’s no need to clutch any pearls and they’re in fact written a lot better than most sex you encounter in current books and most importantly, it’s between consenting adults.
Definitely recommend to readers interested in gender studies, trans experience, and the non-Western experience. There are a lot of books in the world about cis white dude’s experience, “Calling My Deadname Home” is the brutally honest opposite of that and I’m better for having read it. We should all listen to more voice’s like Avi’s.
“Calling My Deadname Home” will be published 14 November 2024 by Muswell Press. Thanks to the publisher for providing early review copies to NetGalley.
A view of the Sunshine Coast, where I was visiting when I read this spectacular memoir.
Joy Reads Books 