The New York Times Book Review - Lisa Miller
…generously traces the parameters of parental love…Children are never what one expects, and the trick is not to be disappointed—in fact, to be pleased—with who they are. This process of constantly recalibrating one's expectations is the central job of parenthood: a high-wire act in which one's own memories of childhood and the priorities and habits developed there come into direct conflict with who one's child actually is…Becoming Nicole iterates this idea, delving deep into the case of a single family with a transgender child and discovering in its particulars certain universal truths about the ways children arrive in one's life already themselves.
The New York Times - Jennifer Senior
Reading strictly for plot, Becoming Nicole is about a transgender girl who triumphed in a landmark discrimination case in 2014, successfully suing the Orono school district in Maine for barring her from using the girls' bathroom. But the real movement in this book happens internally, in the back caverns of each family member's heart and mind. Four ordinary and imperfect human beings had to reckon with an exceptional situation, and in so doing also became, in their own modest ways, exceptional…Ms. Nutt…skillfully recreates a story that started years before she arrived at the family's doorstep. (They seem to have given her full-saturation access.) She gets the structure and pacing just right…if you aren't moved by Becoming Nicole, I'd suggest there's a lump of dark matter where your heart should be.
From the Publisher
Fascinating and enlightening.”—Cheryl Strayed
“Reading strictly for plot, Becoming Nicole is about a transgender girl who triumphed in a landmark discrimination case. . . . But the real movement in this book happens internally, in the back caverns of each family member’s heart and mind. Four ordinary and imperfect human beings had to reckon with an exceptional situation, and in so doing also became, in their own modest ways, exceptional. . . . If you aren’t moved by Becoming Nicole, I’d suggest there’s a lump of dark matter where your heart should be.”—Jennifer Senior, The New York Times
“Exceptional . . . ‘Stories move the walls that need to be moved,’ Nicole told her father last year. In telling Nicole’s story and those of her brother and parents luminously, and with great compassion and intelligence, that is exactly what Amy Ellis Nutt has done here.”—The Washington Post
“A profoundly moving true story about one remarkable family’s evolution.”—People
“Becoming Nicole is a miracle. It’s the story of a family struggling with—and embracing—a transgender child. But more than that, it’s about accepting one another, and ourselves, in all our messy, contradictory glory. The Maines family is as American as they come. In the journey they take toward authenticity and justice, we see a model for the future of our country, a future in which all of us—mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters—somehow find the courage, and the love, to become our best selves.”—Jennifer Finney Boylan, former co-chair of GLAAD and author of She’s Not There: A Life in Two Genders
“[Becoming Nicole] generously traces the parameters of parental love . . . delving deep into the case of a single family with a transgender child and discovering in its particulars certain universal truths about the ways children arrive in one’s life already themselves.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice)
“A transgender girl’s coming-of-age saga, an exploration of the budding science of gender identity, a civil rights time capsule, a tear-jerking legal drama and, perhaps most of all, an education about what can happen when a child doesn’t turn out as his or her parents expected—and they’re forced to either shut their eyes and hearts or see everything differently.”—Time
“Extraordinary . . . a wonderful and inspiring story.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune
“A downright necessary book—and a remarkable act of generosity by the Maines family—that will surely start hundreds of conversations in living rooms across the country about what ‘transgender’ means. But it’s also a deeply universal book, one that hits the heart of what it means for all of us, no matter how we struggle (or not) to identify, to be ourselves.”—BuzzFeed
“Gorgeous . . . a really wonderful story.”—NBC New York
Kirkus Reviews
2015-09-21
How a politically conservative middle-class family defended their transgender daughter against bigotry and won a groundbreaking legal victory affirming gender identity. Although the state of Maine—home to the subjects of this book, the Maines family—was one of the early states to pass a law "creating domestic partnerships for same-sex couples," the civil rights of transsexuals opened new territory. The issue that led to the lawsuit was the decision by the Orono school board to exclude the Maines' transgender daughter, Nicole, from using the girls' bathroom after she entered fifth grade—a response to pressure by the Christian Civic League of Maine. More than five years later, the case was finally resolved at the level of Maine's Supreme Court. Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post health and science writer Nutt (Shadows Bright as Glass: The Remarkable Story of One Man's Journey from Brain Trauma to Artistic Triumph, 2011, etc.) weaves together a multilayered narrative, which begins with the private adoption of identical twin boys, Jonas and Wyatt. At age 3, the twins were sociable, lively, and healthy, but Wyatt had begun to exhibit problems with his gender identity. He told his father, "Daddy, I hate my penis," and had begun to show an interest in girls' clothing and toys. The author chronicles the steady evolution of Wyatt's conviction that he was really a girl and the evolving dynamic this created within the family. Nutt reports on medical opinion that gender is established physiologically within the brain and is a matter of heredity. This is especially fascinating in the case of identical twins raised together, only one of whom is transgendered. What is clear in this gripping account is the strength of the emotional bond within the family as Wyatt became Nicole, a bond that deepened as the stakes increased and pressure mounted. A timely, signification examination of the distinction between sexual affinity and sexual identity.
