On Thursday, October 9, 2025, John Cabot University welcomed author Lucy Sante, for a discussion about her new book, I Heard Her Call My Name: A Memoir of Transition (Hutchinson Heinemann, 2024). The book is Sante’s 15th release and a memoir about her experience coming out as a trans woman at the age of 67, and how her gender expression changed over the course of her life. This event was co-sponsored by the JCU Communication Media Studies Department, the English Language and Literature Department, and the Gender Studies Minor in collaboration with Internazionale a Ferrara Festival, InQuiete Festival and NN Editions.
Sante had already written a memoir back in 1999 titled The Factory of Facts: A Memoir (Vintage). She therefore decided to take a different approach for I Heard Her Call My Name. She weaved the recounting of coming out to her family and loved ones with memories of her childhood. “The interesting literary challenge for me is that I was working with two timelines, the first six months of my transition and the entire span of my life, which at that point was 68 years. It was strange, which one do I put first?” She talked about her background growing up in Belgium and arriving as an immigrant to the United States with her family. Sante even compared the two experiences, stating “there was a distinct rhyme between gender transition and the transitioning I’d had to do as an immigrant child coming to America.”
In her discussion with John Cabot University students and staff, Sante talked about what it means to be a trans woman in 2025, amid the rise of TERFs (trans exclusionary radical feminists) who undermine her existence, and the “threat” she poses to the patriarchy by virtue of her gender identity. Trans people are often considered as terrorists and fraudsters by conservatives. For example, in Florida, trans people can be arrested for having documents that identify them as the gender that they were not born with. “We are a threat to male supremacy, and to the patriarchy, because we undermine it. How can males continue to pretend that they are superior when the gender borders are so leaky, when you can become anyone?” She went on to say, “Transgender people are randomly distributed. We are in every nationality, every walk of life, creed, and color. We are a naturally occurring phenomenon.”
Sante’s journey exemplifies how there is no right or wrong way of being yourself, and there is no expiration date to find out who you are and what you want to be. She talked about how she had always known she was trans but had denied herself because it had felt impossible in the landscape she grew up in. Prior to her journey, Sante was a photography professor at Bard College, in upstate New York. She only felt the courage to explore her identity when she saw students at the college do the same. Her decision was further solidified when she saw herself as a woman through the filter of an app. Sante affirmed herself as a woman at 67 and ultimately transitioned. “It took me very long to realize I’m never going to be anyone except myself. I always felt like I wanted to trade places with anybody. Now I'm old, I'm ugly, and this is not my real hair, but I'm still happier because I can just be myself. Transitioning has left me with this sense of peace and acceptance.”
Lucy Sante is a Belgian American non-fiction writer, and author of several influential books, such as Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York (1991) and The Other Paris (2015), which focus on urban history and subcultures. She is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including a Whiting Writers Award, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, a Grammy, an Infinity Award from the International Center of Photography, and Guggenheim and Cullman Center fellowships. Her writing has appeared in the New York Review of Books, The New York Times, Vanity Fair, and other major publications. Along with writing, Sante has been a culture critic for movies, books, art photography, and even property crime, for many years. Sante has completed her Italian book tour for I Heard her Call My Name and has scheduled to release her new book in 2026.
