Born Calliope, Cal Stephanides invokes the Muses of ancient Greece to tell his story, thereby signaling not only his own personal identity but also his family history, reflecting the theme of The Burden of Inheritance: Family History and Personal Identity. Now turning 41, Cal reflects on his life growing up in Detroit, the child of second-generation immigrants. Cal is raised as a girl, only to find as an adolescent that he is chromosomally male. Although he’s the novel’s protagonist, he enters the story at the midpoint of the book, and even then only in his earlier incarnation. Like a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis, Cal works to discover himself by uncovering the past.

As Callie, he navigates the world of late-20th-century Detroit as changing sociocultural attitudes and an emerging racial conscience bring about dramatic changes in the city. Callie charts the tumultuous upheavals of the Vietnam War era and the civil rights movement. In addition, he must confront adolescence, the experience of his immigrant family, and a growing understanding of his own sexuality. He also relates to the Greek epics that underscore his past and is on a journey that will ultimately make him a hero: “I did what any loving, loyal daughter would have done who had been raised on a diet of Hercules movies” (243), he reminisces in describing how he went out during the riots to rescue his father.