Becoming Nicole: The Transformation of an American Family

Amy Ellis Nutt

Oct 2015 · Sold by Random House

About this ebook

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The inspiring true story of transgender actor and activist Nicole Maines, whose identical twin brother, Jonas, and ordinary American family join her on an extraordinary journey to understand, nurture, and celebrate the uniqueness in us all.

Nicole appears as TV’s first transgender superhero on CW’s Supergirl

When Wayne and Kelly Maines adopted identical twin boys, they thought their lives were complete. But by the time Jonas and Wyatt 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 Wyatt’s transition to Nicole, and to undergo a wrenching transformation of their own, the effects of which would reverberate through their entire community. Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Amy Ellis Nutt spent almost four years reporting this story and tells it with unflinching honesty, intimacy, and empathy. In her hands, Becoming Nicole is more than an account of a courageous girl and her extraordinary family. It’s a powerful portrait of a slowly but surely changing nation, and one that will inspire all of us to see the world with a little more humanity and understanding.

Named One of the Ten Best Books of the Year by People • One of the Best Books of the Year by The New York Times Book Review and Men’s Journal • A Stonewall Honor Book in Nonfiction • Finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Nonfiction

“Fascinating and enlightening.”—Cheryl Strayed

“If you aren’t moved by Becoming Nicole, I’d suggest there’s a lump of dark matter where your heart should be.”—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.”—Jennifer Finney Boylan, former co-chair of GLAAD and author of She’s Not There: A Life in Two Genders

Ratings and reviews

As a trans man, I found the book offensive at times, referring to Nicole as "he" in past tense. She is a she and has always been. And misgendering Jazz even though her mom refers to her as she. Saying that Nicole was born male is also incorrect. She was ASSIGNED male at birth. She was born female but with male parts. This book is clearly not written by a trans author. Other than all that, it was great. I loved learning about all the general Trans history and to learn about yet another Trans person's life.

The subject of being transgender is something that a lot of the north american population still cannot grasp, but this book and hopefully soon others like it, will be one of the greatest possible weapons against ignorance! To the Maines Family, if you ever read this, I thank you for everything you have done to support our rights, to bring understanding to people, and just for living your real lives, something i never had the courage to do. Absolutely wonderful and i would recommend this book to pretty much every living person i know because it has meaning in different way to everyone and will help us fight for human rights as a whole!

This is a beautifully written story full of important things I needed to learn. Very touching and very honest. I am changed by having experienced it. I think I am a good parent in a loving family but I have to wonder if I could have been a parent like these.

About the author

Amy Ellis Nutt won the Pulitzer Prize in 2011 for her feature series “The Wreck of the Lady Mary,” about the 2009 sinking of a fishing boat off the New Jersey coast. She is a health and science writer at The Washington Post, the author of Shadows Bright as Glass, and the co-author of the New York Times bestseller The Teenage Brain. She 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.