A timely, significant examination of the distinction between sexual affinity and sexual identity.
How a politically conservative middle-class family defended their transgender daughter against bigotry and won a groundbreaking legal victory affirming gender identity.
Although the state of Maine—home to the subjects of this book, the Maines family—was one of the early states to pass a law “creating domestic partnerships for same-sex couples,” the civil rights of transsexuals opened new territory. The issue that led to the lawsuit was the decision by the Orono school board to exclude the Maines’ transgender daughter, Nicole, from using the girls' bathroom after she entered fifth grade—a response to pressure by the Christian Civic League of Maine. More than five years later, the case was finally resolved at the level of Maine's Supreme Court. Pulitzer Prize–winning Washington Post health and science writer Nutt (Shadows Bright as Glass: The Remarkable Story of One Man's Journey from Brain Trauma to Artistic Triumph, 2011, etc.) weaves together a multilayered narrative, which begins with the private adoption of identical twin boys, Jonas and Wyatt. At age 3, the twins were sociable, lively, and healthy, but Wyatt had begun to exhibit problems with his gender identity. He told his father, “Daddy, I hate my penis,” and had begun to show an interest in girls' clothing and toys. The author chronicles the steady evolution of Wyatt's conviction that he was really a girl and the evolving dynamic this created within the family. Nutt reports on medical opinion that gender is established physiologically within the brain and is a matter of heredity. This is especially fascinating in the case of identical twins raised together, only one of whom is transgendered. What is clear in this gripping account is the strength of the emotional bond within the family as Wyatt became Nicole, a bond that deepened as the stakes increased and pressure mounted.
A timely, significant examination of the distinction between sexual affinity and sexual identity.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9541-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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