A Year Without a Name: A Memoir

A "stunning" (Hanif Abdurraqib), "unputdownable" (Mary Karr) meditation on queerness, family, and desire.

How do you know if you are transgender? How do you know if what you want and feel is real? How do you know whether to believe yourself? Cyrus Dunham's life always felt like a series of imitations--lovable little girl, daughter, sister, young gay woman. But in a culture of relentless self-branding, and in a family subject to the intrusions and objectifications that attend fame, dissociation can come to feel normal.

A Lambda Literary Award finalist, Dunham's fearless, searching debut brings us inside the chrysalis of a transition inflected as much by whiteness and proximity to wealth as by gender, asking us to bear witness to an uncertain and exhilarating process that troubles our most basic assumptions about identity. Written with disarming emotional intensity in a voice uniquely his, A Year Without a Name is a potent, thrillingly unresolved meditation on queerness, family, and selfhood.

Named a Most Anticipated Book of the season by:
Time
NYLON
Vogue
ELLE
Buzzfeed
Bustle
O Magazine
Harper's Bazaar

Author: Cyrus Dunham
Publisher: Back Bay Books
Published: 06/01/2021
Pages: 192
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.35lbs
Size: 8.10h x 5.40w x 0.60d
ISBN13: 9780316444972
ISBN10: 0316444979
BISAC Categories:
- Biography & Autobiography | Literary Figures
- Social Science | LGBTQ+ Studies | General
- Biography & Autobiography | LGBTQ+

About the Author
Cyrus Dunham is a writer and organizer living in Los Angeles. A Year Without a Name is their first book.