Rethinking Normal is a valiant, and necessary, first step towards recognizing the experiences of transgender people and representing their voices in the literary canon. Unfortunately, Katie Rain Hill’s memoir examines Hill’s various crushes and romantic feelings frequently and in great depth to the point where it feels that the memoir is more a way to document romantic conquests than it is a chronicle of her transition. Hill explores the difficulties of trying to communicate her needs and feelings as a child as well as the various steps necessary to legally transition.

Throughout her story, Hill affirms the importance of advocacy and of having different voices to connect to. There are several moments in the memoir where Hill truly breaks through the cloud of romantic detritus and delivers an incredibly important message concerning the way we are constantly being socialized to think of gender in strict and immutable ways. Hill’s memoir begins to get at issues that affect us deeply as a society, but the narrative also perpetuates many of the problems it attempts to call out. At one point she says, “What makes me female is something I felt in the core of myself: that my external body did not match up with how I felt inside, and that I was being seen by others as something I was not” (44). This quote is inherently hypocritical when considered alongside the entire memoir. While attempting to explain how important it is to view people as they would like to be seen, she upholds the same rigidity of gender expectations that she has been attempting to fight. Hill has to change herself in order pass a woman, so that she will be seen desirably as a woman. The images of the women she yearns to be like throughout the memoir are consistently homogenous. The women introduced in the memoir are all first identified by their appearances and their relative attractiveness to men. I believe this was not the intent of Hill’s descriptions, but these comments make it feel like women are defined solely by outside qualities.

Another moment of clarity comes in Chapter 16 with Hill’s discussion of the intricacies and conflict concerning semantics within the queer community. With the ever-evolving nature of language in general, and the additional difficulty of introducing new terms and identities that adequately and inoffensively describe sensitive topics, Hill gets at a fundamental issue within the queer community. With so many individual opinions about which words are acceptable and which are not, it is incredibly hard to consistently speak in a way that will not ruffle feathers. Definitions of queer terms in general are seamlessly woven into the text, ensuring that they are informative but do not stand out. The one exception to this, however, is the noun “transgenders” used to refer to the trans community. There’s no explanation for this syntactic choice. Is it a reclamation of the term, similar to the reclamation of the word “queer?” The resources and the tips included at the end of the memoir are a welcome and beneficial inclusion, however, missing is a section that briefly explains the different terminology Hill uses throughout her memoir.

In the end, Rethinking Normal, leaves one desiring much more, but the existence of the memoir itself is incredible. While Hill’s account may not be the most eloquent, we are lucky to have her story.

© 2015 Catia Cunha

Catia Cunha has a BA in Theater Arts and English from Mount Holyoke College. She won Young Playwrights Inc.’s 2013 National Playwriting Competition where her short play “Legs” was presented as a staged reading at the Lucille Lortel Theatre at the culmination of the Conference. In the spring of 2013 she produced and acted in her first full-length play, ____space, which was presented at Mount Holyoke. Catia’s senior project, Disinsemination, a play about feminist lesbians and aliens, was presented as a staged reading at Smith College and Mount Holyoke in Fall 2013. Mount Holyoke’s Rooke Theatre produced it in March 2014. In October 2014 Catia participated in the Grex Group’s Insomniacs 24-hour play festival. She is currently working on a play about sea monsters in the subway.