Becoming Nicole: The Transformation of an American Family

An Amazon Best Book of October 2015: Why IS it such a big deal to everyone what somebody has in their pants? Excellent question, posed by an unusually astute transgender girl, the subject of Amy Ellis Nutt s emotional and illuminating Becoming Nicole. It s also a little ironic, since Nicole s story makes a bit of a deal of it, but in a much different way than other stories we ve been hearing lately, from celebrities like Caitlyn Jenner and television shows like Transparent. Nicole, her twin brother Jonas, mom Kelly, and dad Wayne, are your typical middle class American family. They live next door to you--are shuttling from work, to Cub Scouts, to softball practice . They re also coming to terms with the fact that one of their own has Gender Dysphoria, a medical condition whereby a person does not identify with the sex they were assigned at birth. And so Wayne and Kelly Maines discover that they don t have two sons at all, but a son and a daughter. This is a particularly hard pill for Republican, Air Force veteran, Wayne, to swallow, and his journey from denial to accepting and championing his daughter, is one of the more powerful and moving side narratives in a book chock full of them. That is why I really struggled to write this review, because Becoming Nicole is an important book that imparts important lessons, and the ones that resonate most have nothing to do with what s in anyone s pants: Be true to yourself, live an authentic life, exercise compassion. Erin Kodicek