Rethinking Normal A Memoir in Transition [Paperback]

In her unique, generous, and affecting voice, nineteen-year-old Katie Rain Hill shares her personal journey of undergoing gender reassignment. Now with a reading group guide!

Katie Rain Hill 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 Normalis a coming-of-age story about transcending physical appearances and redefining the parameters of “normalcy” to embody one’s true self.Rethinking Normal

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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? Wl£K