My Name Was Baby

Chris M. Arnone (he/him) was weaned on comic books and Hardy Boys novels, finding his first literary love in the X-Men, though his longest lasting is a love for Ray Bradbury. He mostly writes science fiction and fantasy, though he’s known to dabble in poetry, playwriting, and literary fiction. As an intersex man, he is particularly interested in gender and sexuality in his writing.Arnone is author of the cyberpunk heist series, The Jayu City Chronicles. He is a senior contributor for Book Riot and a board member of Whispering Prairie Press. He has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Missouri–Kansas City. He also performs on many stages in Kansas City, where he lives with his wife Christy and their cats.

• Foreword by Alicia Roth Weigel The I Word Part I—Childhood Happy Birthday Buttons Boyhood Arnone Part II—Adolescence Sex Education Family Is a Four-Letter Word Chosen Family Part III—Adulthood College Tessa Finding Direction The Artist Opting Out Executive Order Happiness Resources Glossary to the Intersex Variations Acknowledgments

"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. It’s a reflection on what it means to live truthfully—to let go of shame, to question what we’ve been taught, and to find freedom in being fully ourselves. It is an intersex story filled with honesty and heart that you won’t forget."—Georgiann Davis, author of Five Star White Trash: A Memoir of Fraud and Family"In Chris Arnone’s 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 faces—and bodies—of 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 Arnone’s 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 Arnone’s 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 child’s genitals accordingly, that child has not been ‘fixed.’ Arnone’s 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, Arnone’s 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