A Soundtrack to a Fabulous Memoir Crackling With Music

Dear listeners,

I read a lot of books about music. When I’m really enjoying one, sometimes I’ll make a playlist of songs mentioned in its pages to stave off that bittersweet feeling that always comes upon finishing a satisfying read. That way, I can always crawl back into a book’s atmosphere just by pressing play.

The book that inspired today’s playlist, the cultural critic Lucy Sante’s “I Heard Her Call My Name,” isn’t about music per se. As its subtitle attests, it is mostly “a memoir of transition,” centered around Sante’s decades of gender dysphoria and her eventual coming out as a trans woman in 2021, in her late 60s. The experience “cracks open the world” for her, as she eloquently puts it.

I found it a gorgeously written, admirably honest book, and I’m not alone in that opinion: The New York Times Book Review named “I Heard Her Call My Name” one of the 10 best books of 2024, and in a laudatory review, Dwight Garner wrote of Sante, “Her sharpness and sanity, moodiness and skepticism are the appeal.”

But another potent part of the book’s appeal is the way Sante depicts culture — and music in particular — playing a vital role in her lifelong journey to becoming more herself. (That she is such a sharp cultural observer will come as no surprise to anyone who has read any of her other books, like the New York chronicle “Low Life” or the collection “Kill All Your Darlings.”)

Eye-opening avant-garde art beckons her to New York as a teenager, and the pulsating sounds of the city — from groundbreaking artists like ESG and Grandmaster Flash — provide a soundtrack to her 20s and 30s. Sante uses music to bring long-gone New York haunts back to life (like a certain bar where the Fall is always on the jukebox) and, eventually, thanks to her childhood idol Françoise Hardy, to arrive at the version of femininity that resonates most deeply with her.

If you haven’t read this book yet, I highly recommend it. And if you have, may this playlist bring you back to the distinct atmosphere between its pages.