Amateur

Amateur: A True Story About What Makes a Man is a nonfiction book by Thomas Page McBee, published August 14, 2018, by Scribner. The book was a finalist a Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Nonfiction and was shortlisted for The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction and the Wellcome Book Prize. Background McBee began regularly writing about masculinity in The Rumpus, which led to his first book, Man Alive, in 2014. During this time, he was transitioning and "wrestling with the implications of embracing a gender responsible for so much hurt in the world." In hopes of improving his self-defense skills and further investigating masculinity, McBee began boxing and eventually participated in a charitable boxing match, making him the first transgender man to box in Madison Square Garden.