How to be a Girl

Marlo Mack (a pen name) produces the How to Be a Girl podcast, chronicling life with her transgender daughter, 'M'. She has been interviewed and featured in, and written for such outlets as the New York Times, National Geographic, Scientific American, TIME magazine, People, and Refinery29. In May 2021 a BBC World Service two-part documentary Marlo helped produce and featured in was aired. This is her first book.

** Includes foreword from Susie Green, CEO of charity Mermaids **

Mama, something went wrong in your tummy. And it made me come out as a boy instead of a girl.

When Marlo Mack's three year old says these words, she's not surprised - but she's completely unprepared. Marlo gave birth to a beautiful baby boy - M - and brushed his pleas for pink clothes and dresses aside as a young child's playful experimentation with gender. But when her son begs to be put back in her tummy because he came out wrong, she knows she must listen more closely.

How to Be a Girl is a raw and unflinching memoir of a mother grappling with her child's transition. Always wanting to support M, Marlo - whose podcast of the same name has over 1.3 million downloads - finds her liberal values surprisingly challenged, and as she learns more about gender and its varied expressions, she questions what being a girl - or a boy, or something else entirely - really means.

This beautifully written book is about parental love, pure and simple. And I don't mean just the rhetorical "love" claimed by all parents when things are going easy, but the unconditional "LOVE" required when faced with something in your child that makes them-and you-potential pariahs. There is so much to learn here from Marlo and her gorgeous daughter M.I'm so grateful to Marlo and her daughter for sharing their story. As a dad who is trans, I'm excited to read it with my own child one day - to have this among the diversity of experiences we can explore and reflect on. Despite the obstacles all kinds of trans families face, resources like this make me feel lucky to be trans and to be a parent at this moment in time.This book is powerful because of its honesty and openness.

Marlo Mack's How to Be a Girl is an extraordinary mother-daughter story and also a wondrously ordinary one, not just about a mother's unconditional love but also about listening to one another, learning together, following your mama-gut as well as your mama-heart, and leaping into the unknown with a child - your child - as your guide.

How to Be a Girl exemplifies the true meaning of unconditional love ... A stunning story. . . . Smart, honest, and deeply personal, this illuminating work should be required reading.Transgender children are in the news. Bobbing in the sea of headlines is a growing number of memoirs written by parents of transgender kids. . . . The latest is among the best-Marlo Mack's How to Be a Girl. . . Mack's prose is accessible and smart, by turns witty and searching. Her storytelling is sprinkled with the kind of helpful explanations one might find in a parenting advice book. . . . [Yet] Mack's touch is light, like a friend making a wholehearted suggestion over coffee.