Calling My Deadname Home

‘Early in my gender transition, I tried killing off my female past. But my deadname, Talia, fought back. She kept barging into consciousness, insisting on being seen and integrated into the man I was becoming.

This is our story, and it goes beyond gender to explore what it means to come home.’

Five years into his gender transition, Avi is comfortable in his skin. He is a gay, trans bear—a bearded, rugged, warm-hearted man who loves men. But something is missing.

On an LGBTQ+ retreat, Avi has an epiphany, he realises that to grow into the man he knows himself to be, he has to make friends with his female past, invite her back in.

This is the story of Avi’s extraordinary journey, from his early days in a working-class Israeli family, barely finished high school, on to pro-Palestinian activism and then, evading military service by feigning madness. Ultimately, he escaped to the US where he pursued further education attaining a PhD from Yale.

This is a memoir like no other, utterly original and completely engrossing.