Rethinking Normal: A Memoir in Transition - Couverture rigide

Hill, Katie Rain

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 1481418238 ISBN 13 : 9781481418232

Editeur : Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2014

Synopsis

In her unique, generous, and affecting voice, nineteen-year-old Katie Hill shares her personal journey of undergoing gender reassignment.

Have you ever worried that you’d never be able to live up to your parents’ expectations? Have you ever imagined that life would be better if you were just invisible? Have you ever thought you would do anything—anything—to make the teasing stop? Katie Hill had and it nearly tore her apart.

Katie never felt comfortable in her own skin. She realized very young that a serious mistake had been made; she was a girl who had been born in the body of a boy. Suffocating under her peers’ bullying and the mounting pressure to be “normal,” Katie tried to take her life at the age of eight years old. After several other failed attempts, she finally understood that “Katie”—the girl trapped within her—was determined to live.

In this first-person account, Katie reflects on her pain-filled childhood and the events leading up to the life-changing decision to undergo gender reassignment as a teenager. She reveals the unique challenges she faced while unlearning how to be a boy and shares what it was like to navigate the dating world and experience heartbreak for the first time in a body that matched her gender identity. Told in an unwaveringly honest voice, Rethinking Normal is a coming-of-age story about transcending physical appearances and redefining the parameters of “normalcy” to embody one’s true self.

A propos du livre

À propos de l?auteur

Katie Rain Hill is a student at the University of Tulsa majoring in anthropology and sociology. She wrote this memoir while studying for exams, writing term papers, working part-time as a pharmaceutical technician, and advocating for LGBTQA rights. Rethinking Normal is her first book.

Extrait. © Reproduit sur autorisation. Tous droits réservés.

Rethinking Normal

1

BLUEBERRY BLUE

I was born on May 12, 1994, in New Bern, North Carolina, with my umbilical cord wrapped around my neck. As soon as I came out, the doctors flew into a frenzy, grabbed me, pushed my dad—who had been waiting to cut the cord of his firstborn son—out of the way, cut the cord themselves, and rushed me to a table to try to revive me. My mom caught a glimpse as they whisked me away—my face blueberry blue from lack of airflow—and she started screaming and crying.

“Where’s my baby? Where’s my baby?”

She kicked and thrust, trying to get out of the stirrups and out of the bed, while doctors held her down.

I could have died, almost did die. The doctors pinked me back up and brought me to my mom.

“Are you sure he’s okay?” my mother asked.

According to my mom, I was completely silent—eerily so for a newborn—fast asleep in her arms. My mom was terrified that I’d somehow been damaged from the asphyxiation, that I might be mentally handicapped like her second son from a previous marriage, Josh, was. The doctors reassured her that everything was fine. They brought my dad back in, and he and my mom stared down at me. Soft, full lips. Long eyelashes. And when I slowly opened them, deep blue eyes just like my dad’s.

“Look at him,” my mom whispered. “He’s an angel.”

• • •

The very first question people ask when there’s a baby involved is, “Is it a boy or a girl?” And the instant that question is answered, people begin to place prejudgments and expectations onto that baby. If it’s a boy, they imagine the clothes he will be dressed in, what toys he will be given, what sports he will play, the woman he will fall in love with and marry. If it’s a girl, they envision party dresses, a bride walking down the aisle, a mom-to-be giving birth herself.

And so it was with me. My parents knew beforehand that they were having a boy, and planned accordingly. After I was born, they wrapped me in my blue-and-white blankie and took me home from the hospital to my blue-painted bedroom. The first couple of years of my life, I barely made a peep. I was the quietest baby you could possibly imagine. I never cried. I never whined. My mom wouldn’t even know when to feed me or change my diaper. I would just lie there with that stupid happy baby face, with a diaper full of poop, smiling at everyone. My mom says I was the happiest baby she’s ever seen. It was a happiness that would not last long.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
• Date d'édition: 2014
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 1481418238
• ISBN 13: 9781481418232
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 272
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible