Rethinking Normal: A Memoir in Transition
Summary:
This is a memoir written by nineteen-year-old Katie Rain Hill, where she looks back at her experiences as a younger teenager, including her experiences of being bullied, her coming to terms with her gender and sexuality, coming out to her family, and her experience of transitioning from male to female in her mid-teenage years. From a very young age, Katie realised she was born in the wrong body. This book explores her sometimes difficult journey as she finds and becomes her true self. Though the book tackles many difficult and painful experiences, it also explores her experiences of happiness and contentment.
Edited by: Dublin City University
Comment:
This is an important book based on the author’s lived experiences, written at the time when she was still a teenager. The factual nature of this book, which includes practical information for transgender teenagers, teenagers who are questioning their gender identity, as well as for their cisgender peers, not to mention the adults in their lives. The author deals with the complexities of the varieties of individual experiences of biological sex and gender in a matter-of-fact manner, based on her lived experiences. The narrative provides glimpses into the importance of representation, and the refuge that literary and fictional worlds can provide and have had a huge impact on Katie’s life. This is apparent as her own fictional creations eventually become part of her identity through the inclusion of her character’s name Rain in her own new name. The difficulty and complexities of childhood and teenage years are felt with full impact.