Becoming Nicole (Nutt)

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