"My Name Was Baby is a brave and intimate exploration of the search for identity, belonging, and the meaning of manhood beyond the narrow rules of masculinity. Its a reflection on what it means to live truthfullyto let go of shame, to question what weve been taught, and to find freedom in being fully ourselves. It is an intersex story filled with honesty and heart that you wont forget."Georgiann Davis, author of Five Star White Trash: A Memoir of Fraud and Family
"In Chris Arnones My Name Was Baby, readers are taken through a buffet of experiences of childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. Here, we get to feel the summer heat of water balloon fights, navigate divorce, search for ourselves in the facesand bodiesof others and do that never-ending-American-quest: search for who we really are. Long overdue has been the book from Middle America about what it means to be intersex in our culture, and now, thanks to Arnones unrelenting drive to get down on the page what one story of being intersex looks like, we have the path laid for others. At a time when so much is at stake in our libraries, our classrooms, and in our everyday conversations, Arnone blows in like a fresh breeze to help remind us what's at the heart of what we're after: being understood, heard, and appreciated for who we are."Taylor Brorby, author of Boys an Oil: Growing Up Gay in a Fractured Land
"My Name Was Baby is a rare and necessary intersex memoir told with clarity, tenderness, and moral courage. Chris Arnone offers a clear-eyed account of living in a body that complicates the binary, showing how masculinity can be expansive, reflective, and deeply human. As a fellow intersex memoirist who similarly discovered the truth about her own body later in life, I recognize this as a story that refuses shame, honors complexity, and insists that our lives are not medical footnotes but full human narratives."Kimberly M. Zieselman, author of XOXY: A Memoir
"Chris Arnones honest, heartfelt, empowering memoir about growing up with an intersex trait testifies emphatically that, even when surgeons choose the right gender and surgically shape a childs genitals accordingly, that child has not been fixed. Arnones difficult journey into adulthood, as he takes charge of his own medical decisions regarding his body and becomes an accomplished novelist, poet, memoirist, and intersex activist, is illuminating and inspiring."Elizabeth Reis, author of Bodies in Doubt: An American History of Intersex
"From Mormon Church to burlesque stage to married, cyberpunk sci-fi author, Arnones journey illuminates and celebrates the fact that difference does not equal limitation. A charmingly candid, engaging account of the multifaceted nature of the human experience."Hida Viloria, author of Born Both: An Intersex Life
