A Year Without a Name, Cyrus Dunham
A Year Without a Name, Cyrus Dunham
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A Year Without a Name
A Memoir

Author: Cyrus Dunham

Narrator: Cyrus Dunham

Unabridged: 4 hr 38 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/15/2019

Synopsis

A Lambda Literary Award Finalist: from "an extraordinary new voice," a "passionate and clear-eyed and unputdownable" meditation on queerness, family, and desire (Mary Karr).

For as long as they can remember, Cyrus Grace Dunham felt like a visitor in their own body. Their life was a series of imitations—lovable little girl, daughter, sister, young gay woman—until their profound sense of alienation became intolerable.

Moving between Grace and Cyrus, Dunham brings us inside the chrysalis of gender transition, asking us to bear witness to an uncertain and exhilarating process that troubles our most basic assumptions about who we are and how we are constituted. Written with disarming emotional intensity in a voice uniquely theirs, A Year Without a Name is a potent, thrillingly unresolved queer coming of age story.

Named one of Fall 2019's Most Anticipated Books by:
Time
NYLON
Vogue
ELLE
Buzzfeed
Bustle
O Magazine
Harper's Bazaar

Reviews

Goodreads review by Valerie on July 30, 2019

I feel like giving this book two stars because of my experience reading it, but it’s not bad, and more trans voices in publishing is great, so I’m bumping it up a star. Cyrus’s writing is straightforward & very honest but the book overall didn’t cohere well for me—they talk about that so maybe it’s......more

Goodreads review by Jennifer ~ TarHeelReader on November 20, 2019

Cyrus Grace Dunham delivers a thought-stirring and powerful memoir about their gender identity and eventual gender transition. At the center of the story is Cyrus Grace’s unresolved feelings about where they stand with their gender identity. The emotions reverberate from the pages, and the writing i......more

Goodreads review by Malinda on August 27, 2020

Wow. I don’t know where to start. This was like reading the diary of a very self involved, pretentious rich kid who is oblivious to how far removed their life is from most everyone else’s. Spend all day picking up garbage for no reason and sorting it, sure. Walk up and down stairs endlessly, ok. Impu......more

Goodreads review by Samantha on November 17, 2019

A lot of the narration felt forced and pretentious. It wasn't very insightful into a transgender experience. I wouldn't recommend it.......more

Goodreads review by Kit on December 11, 2019

It's really hard for me to judge this book-- the subject matter hits far too close to home. When Dunham writes about parts about their "gender journey," so to speak, that I can only relate to intellectually, I question why they included that portion, feel some kind of disgust. (But also, they really......more

Quotes

"Cyrus Grace Dunham is such a tender, open, and nuanced writer, and his book allows itself to be messy and complicated in the name of unflinching honesty. A stunning account of both longing and belonging, A Year Without a Name made every corner of my heart sing."—Hanif Abdurraqib, New York Times bestsellingauthor of THEY CAN'T KILL US UNTIL THEY KILL US and GO AHEAD IN THE RAIN

"Cyrus Grace Dunham has written a classic memoir-passionate and clear eyed and unputdownable. I've never seen a gender journey rendered in more tender, riveting detail. Bravo to this extraordinary new voice."—Mary Karr, author of THE LIARS' CLUB, CHERRY, LIT, and THE ART OF MEMOIR

"Cyrus's book is raw, beautiful and uncompromisingly honest: a slippery, vital account of gender, family and the longing to be real. I read it with my heart in my mouth."—Olivia Laing, author of THE LONELY CITY and CRUDO

"A work of extraordinarily intimate confession rendered in startling, sparkling -- and addictive -- prose. With erudition, frankness, and eloquence, Dunham braids a propulsive narrative momentum together with exquisite particulars of daily life. This book, simply put, summons a private and deeply pleasurable exchange with its reader. In the grand tradition, it keeps us company."—Jordy Rosenberg,author of CONFESSIONS OF THE FOX

"A Year Without a Name is staggering, intimate, and astonishing; you can't help but be awed by the end of it. I'm grateful for the journey this memoir took me on, for what Dunham illuminates about loving ourselves and others."—Bryan Washington, author of LOT

"Cyrus Grace Dunham's memoir is unflinching. His unsettlement about gender is profound, his writing about it genuine and affecting. A Year Without a Name let me travel with Dunham on his difficult, sometimes treacherous, sometimes beautiful, always memorable path."—Lynne Tillman, author of MEN AND APPARITIONS

"Dunham's deeply felt, forthright, lucid accounting of the complex process of determining who they are is astonishing in its intimacy and generosity, and serves as a reminder of how difficult, but how necessary, it is to be honest with ourselves about who we know ourselves to be."
—Kristen Iversen, NYLON

"An honest, reflective reckoning well worth reading."—Tomi Obaro, BUZZFEED

"'Devotion is the closest thing I've known to a stable gender,' Dunham writes in this deeply intimate memoir. Lucid, unvarnished prose makes the book compulsively readable even as it wrestles with the weightiness of transition and identity."—O MAGAZINE

"Raw and powerful."—VOGUE

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