Becoming Nicole (Nutt)

Becoming Nicole:  The Transformation of an American Family
Amy Ellis Nutt, 2015
Random House
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780812995411


Summary
The inspiring true story of a transgender girl, her identical twin brother, and an ordinary American family’s extraordinary journey to understand, nurture, and celebrate the uniqueness in us all.

When Wayne and Kelly Maines adopted identical twin boys, they thought their lives were complete. But it wasn’t long before they noticed a marked difference between Jonas and his brother, Wyatt.

Jonas preferred sports and trucks and many of the things little boys were “supposed” to like; but Wyatt liked princess dolls and dress-up and playing Little Mermaid. By the time the twins were toddlers, confusion over Wyatt’s insistence that he was female began to tear the family apart.

In the years that followed, the Maineses came to question their long-held views on gender and identity, to accept and embrace Wyatt’s transition to Nicole, and to undergo an emotionally wrenching transformation of their own that would change all their lives forever.

Becoming Nicole chronicles a journey that could have destroyed a family but instead brought it closer together. It’s the story of...

• a mother whose instincts told her that her child needed love and acceptance, not ostracism and disapproval,
• a Republican, Air Force veteran father who overcame his deepest fears to become a vocal advocate for trans rights,
• a loving brother who bravely stuck up for his twin sister,
• a town forced to confront its prejudices, a school compelled to rewrite its rules, and...
• a courageous community of transgender activists determined to make their voices heard.

Ultimately, Becoming Nicole is the story of an extraordinary girl who fought for the right to be herself.

Granted wide-ranging access to personal diaries, home videos, clinical journals, legal documents, medical records, and the Maineses themselves, Amy Ellis Nutt spent almost four years reporting this immersive account of an American family confronting an issue that is at the center of today’s cultural debate.

Becoming Nicole will resonate with anyone who’s ever raised a child, felt at odds with society’s conventions and norms, or had to embrace life when it plays out unexpectedly. It’s a story of standing up for your beliefs and yourself—and it will inspire all of us to do the same. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1956-57
• Where—N/A
• Education—B.A., Smith College; M.A., M.I.T. and Columbia University
• Awards—Pulitzer Prize
• Currently—lives in Washington, DC


Amy Ellis Nutt won the Pulitzer Prize in 2011 for her Newark Star Ledger feature series “The Wreck of the Lady Mary,” about the 2009 sinking of a fishing boat off the New Jersey coast. Currently, she is a health and science writer at the Washington Post.

She is also the author of three books: Becoming Nicole: The Transformation of an American Family (2015), Shadows Bright as Glass: The Remarkable Story of One Man's Journey from Brain Trauma to Artistic Triumph (2011), and the co-author with Frances E. Jensen, M.D. of the New York Times bestseller The Teenage Brain: A Neuroscientist's Survival Guide to Raising Adolescents and Young Adults (2015).

Nutt was a Nieman Fellow in Journalism at Harvard University, a Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton, and an instructor of journalism at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She lives in Washington, D.C. (Adapted from the publisher.)

Book Reviews
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.
Jennifer Senior - New York Times


[The author] 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.
Lisa Miller - New York Times Book Review


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


Nutt reports on medical opinion that gender is established physiologically within the brain and is a matter of heredity.... What is clear in this gripping account is the strength of the emotional bond within the family.... A timely, significant examination of the distinction between sexual affinity and sexual identity.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:

• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)

Consider these LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for Becoming Nicole:

1. Discuss the differences between the twins, and when those differences began to emerge.

2. Talk about Wayne and Kelly Maines and the manner in which they dealt with Wyatt/Nicole's emerging transformation? How difficult is it for any parent to acknowledge a child's profound divergence from expectations? How would you have reacted if you had been in Wayne and Kelly's situation?

3. What about Jonas? Does he receive equal treatment from his parents, or has so much attention revolved around his sibling that he remains somewhat on the sidelines?

4. The author writes of transgender people:

If there is an inner distress...it arises from knowing exactly who they are, but at the same time being locked into the wrong body.... The dysfunction arises not from their own confusion, but from being made to feel like freaks or gender misfits.

What is your reaction to transgendered individuals? Has this book altered the way in which you understand their situation? Are you more, or less, sympathetic? Why?

5. What, if any, legitimate protections and/or rights should transgendered individuals expect from society?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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