I Call My Own Name: A Homegirl's Lyrical Memoir of Healing, Hip-Hop, and Holy Reclamation

Author: Dionne Grayman

Format: Softcover | Trim Size: 5.5" x 8.5" | Pages: 120 | Publication Date: November 6, 2026

Cover reveal coming June 2026

Maya Angelou meets Mary J. Blige

A memoir of a Black woman’s journey through single motherhood in the ‘90s, moonlighting as an MC, who goes on to become an English teacher in Brooklyn.

Blending story, bars, scripture, and soulwork, I Call My Own Name traces the head-to-knee-bending, humbling, and healing journey of a woman remembering herself whole. It’s about that hand-on-the-doorknob moment when it becomes less important to be called by name, and infinitely more powerful to decide to call your own, and the courage it takes to open the door and walk on through.

Dionne Grayman (she/her) is a Brooklyn-born educator, writer, healer, and cultural strategist whose work sits at the crossroads of leadership, liberation, and legacy. Her essays and op-eds have appeared in Chalkbeat and the Hechinger Report. She is the co-author of Social and Emotional Learning: Creating Systemic Change in Schools (Harvard Education Press, 2020).

Features
• Mid-life awakening seasoned with ‘90s retrospective
• Self-love for the Mary J generation
• Self-help meets hip hop

Benefits
• Best friend in book form
• Laughter, repair, and a love letter to Black womanhood
• Helps answer the question, What would it look like to know what I deserve?

Ideal reader
• Women in their second act
• Fans of bell hooks and Beyoncé
• Black women and allies craving stories of reclamation, healing, and power

Pre-Order Bonus

“Beauty-Full in Brookyln”
Readers who pre-order I Call My Own Name by July 1 will receive exclusive access to Beautiful in Brooklyn, a digital companion experience created by author, Dionne Grayman, featuring a thoughtfully curated playlist and an audio welcome.

Designed as an intimate entry point into the emotional and spiritual world of the book, this offering includes:

• A personally curated playlist connected to the emotional landscape of the book, Songs That Called Me Back: Featuring music that shaped the writing process and reflects the themes of becoming, reclamation, grief, joy, softness, memory, survival, and self-naming 

More than a promotional offering, Songs That Called Me Back serves as a ritual of arrival that invites readers into the deeper questions and reflections at the heart of I Call My Own Name, before the book officially reaches their hands.

Through storytelling, music, and reflection, readers will experience the atmosphere and emotional architecture of the work while becoming part of the founding community supporting the book’s release.

Beauty-Full in Brooklyn Playlist:

Spirit Survival 
Free in Your Hips 
Auntie Wisdom & Church Mother memories
Homages to Homegirls & Play Cousins
Brooklyn Soundscapes
Softness & Self-return
Been Her
Joy Revolutionary 

• A personal recorded message from Dionne Grayman reflecting on:

- Why this book was written
- The practice of calling oneself home
- Self-trust, healing, and becoming
- What readers are being invited into through this work