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Sebastian Ritscher
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BECOMING NICOLE

Amy Ellis Nutt

The Transformation of an American Family

A family's adopted twin sons are identical, except as toddlers, one clearly identifies as a female, the other male. This could have destroyed a family, but instead united them. BECOMING NICOLE is a beautiful and dynamic family story. Pulitzer-Price-winning author Amy Ellis Nutt gently reveals the transformation of every member of this special family and the reader wants all of them to win – as a family. And they do.
Jonas and Wyatt were the twin sons Kelly and Wayne Maines expected, but from very early on Wyatt was only interested in girls' clothes and toys. By age five, this conflict was tearing Wyatt--and the family--apart. Jonas and Nicole turn 18 this year, and their lives are very different now than they were. Nicole and her family were at the center of groundbreaking lawsuit that expanded rights for transgender children. Nicole also recently made her acting debut on the USA medical drama Royal Pains playing a trans teen.

BECOMING NICOLE is a fascinating and timely story. It also happens to be an extremely well-written narrative by an author who spent years with the Maines family coming to understand their dynamic and the difficulties involved. Nutt’s relationship with them clearly made a huge difference in how she successfully exposes the depth and complexity of the issues at hand both this family and for all of us.

Amy Ellis Nutt won the Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing in 2011. She is currently the health and science writer at The Washington Post. She is the author of Shadows Bright as Glass: The Remarkable Story of One Man’s Journey from Brain Trauma to Artistic Triumph (Free Press, 2011), which was based on a series of stories called “The Accidental Artist” for which Nutt was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing in 2009, and the co-author of the New York Times bestseller The Teenage Brain Explained. She was a Nieman Fellow in Journalism at Harvard and Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton, and an instructor at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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Book

Published 2015-10-20 by Random House

Book

Published 2015-10-20 by Random House

Comments

A profoundly moving true story about one remarkable family’s evolution

Becoming Nicole is a miracle. It’s the story of a family struggling with—and embracing—a transgender child. But more than, it’s really about accepting each other, and ourselves, in all our messy, contradictory glory.

If you aren't moved by Becoming Nicole, I'd suggest there's a lump of dark matter where your heart should be.

Nicole Maines on Being TV's First Trans Superhero: "I'm Nervous Beause I Want to Do It Right" Read more...

Gripping . . . a timely, significant examination.

Show trailer featuring Nicole. Read more...

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.

Amazon's October Spotlight Pick: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=s9_acss_bw_ab_x_?rh=i:stripbooks,n:390919011&ie=UTF8&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=merchandised-search-top-2&pf_rd_r=000NP98T8GATVDF18DF9&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=2229695602&pf_rd_i=283155 Read more...

Nicole Maines will star in The CW/Warner Brothers' TV show "Supergirl" as Nia Nal, aka Dreamer and the first transgender superhero on TV. The show will premiere on October 14th in the US. Read more...

Complex Chinese: China Times ; Simplified Chinese: Beijing Xiron ; Polish: Czarna Owca ; Spanish: Next Door ; UK/ BC: Atlantic Books

Reading strictly for plot,Becoming Nicoleis 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 byBecoming Nicole,I’d suggest there’s a lump of dark matter where your heart should be

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.

An exceptional chronicle . . . ‘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