Cher explains why she refers to son Chaz using his dead name in the book
Chaz Bono, Cher.
Amanda Edwards/WireImageCher clears up any confusion among readers about why she refers to her son by his dead name in her new book.
“This memoir is based on my (sometimes imperfect) memory,” Cher, 78, wrote in the author’s note Cher: The Memoir – Part One. “In this memoir I refer to my son Chaz as Chas, the name he bore during the years covered in this book. Chaz has given his blessing for this custom. In the next part, at the appropriate point, I will refer to my son as Chaz.
Cher dedicated her book – which hit shelves on Tuesday, November 19 – to her mother, Georgiaher sister, Georganneand her two children: Chaz and Elijah. (Cher welcomed Chaz in 1969 with Son Bonofive years before filing for divorce in 1974. The following year, she gained custody of Chaz. Four days after finalizing her divorce from Bono, Cher got married Greg Allman. The couple welcomed Elijah in 1976 before splitting in 1979.)
While chronicling Chaz’s birth story in her memoir, Cher recalled Bono expressing his desire for a son. “Remember, Cher, I want a boy!” he told me, laughing the whole time,” Cher wrote.
After Chaz’s birth, Cher said Bono gushed over their little one. “Sonny came the next morning and told me we had a girl who weighed seven pounds, eight ounces, and she was beautiful,” she wrote. ‘He didn’t seem to mind at all that she wasn’t a boy. I named her Chastity Sun, ‘Chastity’ because it was my name in the movie we just made and ‘Sun’ after her father.”
Cher has been open about navigating motherhood over the years after Chaz, now 55, first came out as a lesbian before undergoing gender reassignment surgery in 2009.
“It wasn’t like me at all to have a problem with Chaz being gay in the beginning, and that just went away,” Cher recalls. CNN in 2020. “Then we talked about it [whether Chaz was] transgender for many years. And [he] would say, ‘No, I don’t want that [transition]. And then he went and said, ‘Okay, I want to do this.’
There is only one goddess of pop – and she only needs one name: Cher. The legendary singer (born Cherilyn Sarkisian) is more than five decades into her mega-successful career, which has spanned the worlds of music, TV, film and fashion. She’s just one Tony Award away from becoming an EGOT winner, with a […]
Cher admitted that it “wasn’t easy,” adding, “I remember calling, and the old (voicemail) message… was on the phone, and that was very difficult.”
‘But you don’t really get rid of them. They’re just in a different form,” she continued, adding that Chaz – became the first transgender person to perform Dancing with the stars in 2011 – is now “so incredibly happy”.
Cher: The Memoir – Part One hits shelves on November 19.
