The New Girl: A Trans Girl Tells It Like It Is

by Rhyannon Styles Narrated by Rhyannon Styles

Overview

The transgender memoir you won't stop hearing about. Rhyannon Styles will do for transgender what Matt Haig did for mental health. Elle columnist Rhyannon Styles tells her unforgettable life story in THE NEW GIRL, charting her incredible journey from male to female. A powerful book about being true to ourselves, for anyone who's ever felt a little lost.

Imagine feeling lost in your own body. Imagine spending years living a lie, denying what makes you 'you'. This was Ryan's reality. He had to choose: die as a man or live as a woman.

In 2012, Ryan made the choice to set Rhyannon free. At the age of thirty Rhyannon began her transition, taking the first steps on the long road to her true self, and the emotional, physical and psychological journey that would change her for ever.

In a time when the world is finally waking up to transgender people, Rhyannon opens up to us, holding nothing back in this heartbreakingly honest telling of her life. Through her catastrophic lows and incredible highs, Rhyannon paints a picture of what it's like to be transgender in glorious technicolor. From cabaret drag acts, brushes with celebrity and Parisian clown school, to struggles with substance abuse and crippling depression, Rhyannon's story is like nothing you've read before.

It is a redemptive, moving and empowering story, of how we must fight to be true to ourselves, even if it seems beyond the realms of possibility. This, we owe to ourselves.

(P)2017 Headline Publishing Group Ltd

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

I watched Rhyannon Styles begin as the most inspiring and heart-wrenching cocoon I ever saw and now she is a glorious butterfly—Paloma Faith

Love Rhyannon. Love this book. Everything you've ever wondered about transition, cocooned in an epic tale of fleeing suburbia and big city fabulousness—Grace Dent

I loved this book - Rhyannon doesn't just shine a light on this subject, she sets off a bloody fireworks display—Cherry Healey

I am changed for having read this - congratulations, Rhyannon, on a bold life that inspires and lifts - the world needed this truth—Laura Jane Williams, author and blogger

A story that will make you smile and sob in equal measure, and challenge everything you thought you knew about gender, sex, and fashion. Once read, never forgotten—Rebecca Root

A wonderful asset to our community—Caroline Tula, Trans icon, model and Bond girl

Proud to be holding this book ... The best and worst of times in a wonderful memoir—Lorraine Candy, Sunday Times

Rhyannon is such a great ambassador for the trans community. She writes with such class while also keeping it super real. I've got a book coming out later this year and all I'm saying is I'm glad my book isn't a memoir, because I'd hate to have to compete with this—Charlie Craggs

Rhyannon Styles journey of transition is fraught with the unique issues of her generation. Honest and unflinching, she walks the tightrope of uncertainty with confidence in the unknowing. A modern Artemis in the queer wilderness, midwifing her own becoming—Penny Arcade

A deeply honest and candid memoir ... In a beautifully moving account of her life, Rhyannon left us captured until the very last page—Marie Claire South Africa

Kirkus Reviews

2018-01-22
Styles, who began transitioning from male to female at age 30 in 2012, looks back over the path of her life from childhood up to the present.In her first book, the British author, who was the transgender columnist for Elle U.K. from 2015 to 2017, reaches out to readers who wonder about the often awkward and confusing process of transitioning. She begins with memories of growing up in rural England in the 1980s, often switching "between the roles of girl and boy in my head, unsure of which one felt more secure." Young Ryan—who changed his name to Rhyannon when he began transitioning—liked to dress in girls' clothes and wear makeup and felt at home with the girls in his primary school. Bullied as an early teen, he found a home later in adolescence with other teens involved in art and music and then went on to London to study jewelry making in art school. For a while, the author satisfied his desire to dress as a woman by performing in drag shows. Eventually, however, he wanted a more permanent and less showy change, so he began to communicate with his family, whom he had previously kept in the dark about his gender identity. Though generally upbeat, Styles also reveals a more tormented side in a chapter called "The B-Side," which details long periods of depression and drug and alcohol abuse, eventually abated through 12-step programs. She describes in cheerful detail the process of transitioning, including the effects of hormones on her body and personality, both positive and negative, and she details her present state of indecision about just how far to go with transition. Her acceptance of a fluid identity should be comforting for readers who feel out of place in a cultural system that divides gender into traditional male and female roles.An honest and helpfully specific journey through a life that has taken some unexpected turns, of interest to all open-minded readers and especially to transgender individuals and those who care about them.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170352005
Publisher:	Octopus Books
Publication date:	06/01/2017
Edition description:	Unabridged

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