In Just Call Me Lady: A Work of Completion, Mandy Goodhandy, also known as Amanda Taylor, invites readers into a life that defies categories, bends expectations, and reclaims identity on fiercely honest terms. More than a memoir of gender transition, this is a book about the reclamation of self, the art of survival, and the healing power of finally letting the little girl inside come out and live in the light.
While many transgender memoirs focus on the arc from “before” to “after,” Goodhandy reshapes the narrative.
This is not a transition story in the conventional sense. “I don’t see this as a transition,” she says in an interview with The Heroines of My Life. “It’s a story of completion. Of finally becoming the whole person I was always meant to be.”
That redefinition is at the heart of the book’s title and its soul: Just Call Me Lady. With candor, dark humor, and theatrical flair, Goodhandy recounts a life shaped by forced performances, moments of revelation, and a relentless search for truth in a society that demanded silence.
Born in Scotland, Mandy was, as she puts it, “a little girl who had to act like a boy to survive.” Mainstream society provided her with no scripts, no vocabulary, no space to simply be. And so she did what many children do when their authenticity is dangerous, she learned to act.
