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Her Name Is Alice

My Daughter, Her Transition and Why We Must Remember Her

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Her Name Is Alice

By: Caroline Litman
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Summary

'Thoughtful, beautiful, incredibly necessary. People need to read this book, especially if they feel a resistance to. I wish everyone would.' Sofie Hagen

‘Uncompromising, anguished, combative: culture wars have victims, and this is an agonising story told with honesty and passion.’ Richard Beard

'An intimate, beautifully told memoir' Elinor Cleghorn

When my third child was born, I was told I had a boy. The baby was given a boy’s name and raised in that gender. But when she died, twenty years later, she died as my daughter, and will forever be remembered that way.

Alice Litman died by suicide in May 2022, aged just twenty years old, having already waited almost three years for her first appointment at a gender identity clinic.

In stunningly beautiful prose, Caroline Litman captures the realities of an often-messy journey navigating both her daughter’s transition and the days, weeks and months after Alice’s death.

Searing, urgent and utterly unique, Her Name is Alice is the raw, human story of a mother’s love and grief for her child – and of a young trans woman who is impossible to forget and who must be remembered.

©2025 Caroline Litman (P)2025 HarperCollins Publishers Activists Biographies & Memoirs Grief & Loss LGBTQ+ Studies Personal Development Politics & Activism Relationships
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Critic reviews

'An inspirational mother, story and book' Ella Morgan

'A mother-daughter love story about fighting a world stacked against you. Brilliant and super relevant.' India Willoughby

‘A tragic, defiant story beautifully and deftly told. A timely reminder that the victims of the relentless culture wars are real people with real lives who love each other with unimaginable intensity. Life's complicated, and we do it a disservice to reduce it to cheap soundbites. Caroline's elegy illustrates this perfectly.’ Paul Sinha

'An urgent, powerful call for people to be trusted, supported and cared for – in their gender identities, and as themselves. With searing honesty, Litman reveals the damage done to people and their loved ones when uninformed hostility subsumes understanding, and kindness.' Elinor Cleghorn

'It feels inadequate to say how brave she is, in the living of the experience and then the honest, raw recounting of it. Her voice is as clear as a bell and she shares a powerful insight into a system so ineffective and broken it feels pointless. Breathtakingly awful and compelling with glimmers of hope in the conclusion.' Lucy Brazier

'Heart-breaking – also incredibly important. By telling frankly the story of her daughter's life, Caroline shines an unyielding, necessary light on the devastating impact of transphobia, and the urgent need for broader understanding of the emotional reality of trans lives.' John McCullough

'An intimate reflection on a mother-daughter relationship that is frank and heartbreaking. Caroline bravely shares how her own prejudice towards transgender people impacted how she treated Alice when she came out, showing us that it is possible for people to change their views. While the NHS trans healthcare system is moving in the wrong direction to prevent further tragedies like Alice's death, we can still hope that this book helps other parents to love their trans kids as fiercely as Caroline loves Alice.' Vic Parsons
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Most relevant
Her Name Is Alice is a deeply moving account about the courage, vulnerability, and resilience of those navigating life with gender dysphoria in a world that too often refuses to listen, but are often harshly judged. Told in the heartfelt words of a mother who supported her daughter, to discover a life that was whole and authentic This book describes the hostility that is often experienced by the trans community and ultimately caused Alice to take her life at such a young age. Caroline Litman wholly points out the stark challenges that her daughter faced daily. To those who hold strong anti-trans views or who struggle to understand gender identity, I urge you to read this book. Not as a debate, but as a story from the mother of a girl that endured hostility and judgement just because she was living life as her authentic self. This book is a gift of perspective. Let it move you. Let it challenge you. Let it soften the spaces that have become hardened by fear, hate, or misinformation. In solidarity with the transgender community, I recommend Her Name Is Alice to anyone willing to read with an open heart and mind, and a willingness to grow.

A deeply moving testament

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There is something extra special about hearing a memoir narrated by its author, and this story is exceptionally special. An unflinchingly honest account of mothering and grief in a hostile world. Somehow capturing all of the searing pain as well as every glimmer of love, hope and relational reparation. Stunning writing, completely absorbing, full of thought-provoking lessons for everyone and anyone.

Profoundly moving, a must-read

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I loved this book. It is so well written and so brutally honest. I think if everyone read this book and learnt to respect everyone for their differences then the world would be a much better place. It also tackles the inequalities of our healthcare system and how the transgender community are left to wait far too long with little support to receive the treatment they deserve. Thought the author was so brave to read the book herself and felt it made the narrative even stronger.

Everyone should read this book

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I'm not trans. I'm not nonbinary. I don't have kids. I know the grief of losing a relative to suicide but that was sudden and unexpected. What I don't know is the turmoil and heartache that must be involved in seeing what may be coming and feeling unable to stop the decline.

Caroline Litman does two important things in this book: 1. Writes about Alice, celebrates Alice and ensures her life is one that, although it was cut short, is not forgotten. 2. Writes with brutal honesty in a way that must have been difficult - especially when acknowledging feelings and actions that she may regret with hindsight.

I have always shied away from memoirs detailing tragedy but with the way the lives of trans and nonbinary people are being used as a political football and with so many people being utterly ignorant and making proclamations having never met a trans person I felt it important to have some insight into what is clearly a huge problem - the high self-harm and suicide rate amongst trans people.

I was surprised how much joy there is in the book. I was pleased that the author ensured her husband and other children also featured prominently. I am all too aware of how suicide can impact so severely on a parent that their partner and other children feel less important or even entirely unimportant in the years that follow. I feel I have learned a great deal by reading this book but also it has not changed how I felt before reading it: trans people are beautiful souls who need our love and support not condemnation, suspicion or ludicrous assumptions that they harbour some malevolent reason for transitioning.

Caroline, that must have been an incredibly difficult book to write and your ability to bare your soul and be so honest about something so personal is remarkable. I bought the book when it came out and was so captivated that I then bought the audiobook so I could also listen on my long commute in the car. I think I will probably come back to it and read it again one day.

Please Read/Listen To This Book

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Parenting is not a role one simply enters into with built-in instructions explaining how to do it right. 3 of 4 in my sibling group have chose not to have kids, though 1 inherited 2 preteens with marriage and 1 adopted when he and his wife were in their mid-40's...I didn't because as dearly as I loved kids, I knew I'd screw them up.
I deeply admire Caroline and Peter's bravery in sharing the truth in so many ways and it's a master class in parenting, showing how one might do it better.... loving and nurturing kids into openness and cherishing them as individuals without suffocating who they truly are....but also, they show the deep love that carries families into and through the toughest of life's moments.
There is no perfect but there is trying your best.
I hope they continue to find peace in realizing how special they are.

a postscript to Caroline and Peter's which might not ease any pain but has lightened my load....anger, negativity and trying to control the rights for individual choices and the funding of help needed.....I have been bullied, attacked, grieviously let down by people tasked to protect me, tried serious suicide attempts x3 and discriminated for most of my 70 years....these people who fail us in our right to live as we are...im not trans but have other challenges. these people are lost, shallow, fearful, have needs to control other people's l8ves because of things and ignorance in their own lives. They are lacking in depth, intelligence, empathy and a large dose of reality. We can not change the cruelty and pain we have been dealt, we can not change the losses we suffer...we can only find some peace in the knowledge we have risen above the unevolved humans struggling to force themselves on us...understand with some pity they are lost and by delving into our own life and continuing to grow and learn and move forward, we have been blessed with a depth they will never know....we feel the highest highs because of the deepest depths we endured. I will choose to believe that children like Alice, who crossed over far too soon and usually in some pain, have been taken because of something beyond us who knew their future was unfair for them to have to endure. The pain is hell but maybe they've been saved from more pain. What has pulled me up at the toughest times is a rather odd, quirky sense of humor and an ability to treat the negative parts of life as lessons to remind us how we are fortunate not to be like the 'them'.....and a belief they are never truly gone but are living at a higher spiritual life.....I hope this makes sense....xo

A true lesson in self discovery and love

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