IT GETS BETTER...EXCEPT WHEN IT GETS WORSE

A young transgender woman tells of her fight against bigotry and misogyny.

Maines “came out as trans when I was three years old,” realizing her “boy-body felt wrong to me.” By age 10, she had socially transitioned—no longer Wyatt, now Nicole. She was the anonymous plaintiff in the Maine Supreme Judicial Court case in which the court ruled that her school district could not deny her access to a female bathroom for being transgender. Maines was also the subject of the bestseller Becoming Nicole: The Transformation of an American Family (2015), “about my parents learning how to raise a trans child, especially my dad, who was cast as having the story’s ‘biggest transformation of all’”: from NRA conservative to trans advocate and motivational speaker. During the course of her life story, we learn about the trauma and eventual resolution of her gender reassignment surgery, her being cast as TV’s first trans superhero on the CW’s Supergirl (2018), and her finding roles as actress, activist, and comic book creator. Maines attests that she did not bend her experience to fit an arbitrary inspirational story arc, but her singular voice powers the book; she is open and humorous and a bit sly. She claims to be “just one plaintive voice, begging people not to be bigots and homophobes,” but she sells herself a bit short. Readers learn about the value of puberty blockers, how a gender-segregated bathroom becomes “the site of potential, and likely, panic,” and how Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid might be the story of a girl born into the wrong body, “a positive picture of what transition could mean.” This is the memoir of a still young and confident woman, with more accomplishments yet to come.

A proud transgender woman is “loved and wanted as I was.”