Author Chris M. Arnone notes in his introduction that “My Name Was Baby: An Intersex Memoir”  is “about healing …(and) challenging … the ideas of ‘normal’ and ‘happy.’”

He accomplishes this in a memoir that explores the in-between. His intersex variations made Arnone feel [on the outside, neither here nor there, excluded or othered at times]. Those feelings extend to his experience as an adolescent who played Magic: The Gathering and participated in theater and band, activities long associated with teenage outsiders. Even Arnone’s approach to structure is its own kind of in-between-ness: prose vignettes sprinkled with poetry. 

This deeply personal account will be many readers’ introduction to the topic of intersexuality, which Arnone handles with sensitivity, skirting the line between informative and clinical (another example of the in-between). For years, he believed his intersex variations were “birth defects.” But he was lucky, he writes: Many individuals with intersex variations present at birth have been subjected to immediate surgeries that amounted to genital mutilation and cause complications later in life. Arnone’s doctors were unsure of his sex at birth, and his parents waited for a chromosomal test. His surgeries happened later, when he was 2.

Arnone taught me that intersex variations are vast; there’s no singular way that intersexuality presents itself in an infant. As a member of the intersex community whose gender matches his sex at birth, Arnone is uniquely qualified to educate readers about the multi-faceted experiences of intersex individuals. He made me realize the importance of broadening my language and for dropping some long-held assumptions about what “all” adolescent boys know.

While his story is about the uniqueness of intersex individuals, “at the same time,” Arnone notes, “we are so much more than that. We have hopes and fears, dreams and ambitions, careers and children and bills, just like everyone else. We contain multitudes.”

Indeed, Arnone was a child of divorce, an adolescent who experienced young love and sexual exploration, a college student who attended raucous parties, an occasional participant in toxic masculine behaviors. He navigates the in-between and embraces it as part of his identity in a story as specific as the experience of being intersex.

“My Name Was Baby” reminded me of my own experience as a member of the LGBTQIA+ community who grew up in the Midwest (remember: The “I”stands for intersex). I identify as a lesbian but didn’t make my sexuality public until the early 2000s when I was in my mid-20s. Much like Arnone, who discovered the term intersex in 2018, I can look back and see how many of my childhood and young adult-choices helped shape me into the person I am today.

That’s the beauty of this memoir: It makes in-between-ness universal. In doing so, it demonstrates how humanity exists on a spectrum. If we choose to, we can learn to accept the variations in our own lives and the lives of those around us.

The Details

"My Name Was Baby: An Intersex Memoir" by Chris M. Arnone
Published by Plainspoken Books, an imprint of University Press of Kansas in June 2026

Learn more about the book and related events on the website for University Press of Kansas.

Shelly Walston is an educator, reader, writer, and collector of commemorative state plates, and she's been teaching English at the high school level for more than two decades. When not grading essays, working on her novel, walking the dogs, or playing strategy games, you'll find Shelly sprawled on her couch, reading a book. More of her writing and book reviews can be found at shellywalstonwrites.com.

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