Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in This Is How It Always Is, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Gender and Binaries
Secrets and Misunderstanding
Violence and Discrimination
Storytelling
Family
Summary
Analysis
Accommodating Poppy’s needs really only boils down to the small part of her life when she is required to take off her underwear. In truth, even Claude sat down to pee, but bathrooms are only half the problem. Penn joins online support groups and visits Facebook pages, where he learns about penis-masking underwear. He learns that he can tell Poppy’s principal (if they want), but they can insist that Poppy use the girls’ bathroom, which really works best because of the stalls. Poppy is entitled to join any of the girls’ sports teams, and she is entitled to use of the girls’ locker room. Poppy is even entitled to join the Girl Scouts, who will allow her to join if even they know her gender identity.
Poppy absolutely has rights as a transgender person, and what Penn learns here highlights just how terribly Poppy was treated by her school back in Madison. Bathrooms are often a way in which transgender people are alienated and marginalized. By making it impossible for transgender people to exist in society (i.e., use public bathrooms), then they will cease going into public spaces, with is the goal of anti-trans issues such as bathrooms. Bathroom controversy is almost never about bathrooms; it is about discrimination.
Themes
Penn’s research on bathrooms and penis-masking underwear seriously cuts into his writing time. He only has a few hours to himself while everyone is at school and Rosie is at work, but he always has laundry, cooking, and cleaning to do. Of course, his research gives him lots of writing material, and when he does find the time, Penn’s writing is dark and beautiful, like Seattle’s weather.
Penn sacrifices his writing for the sake of his family, and for Poppy especially, which again underscores how much Penn’s family means to him. This also pushes against stereotypical gender norms. Usually, women are depicted as giving up themselves or their careers for the children and families, but here it is Penn, which again underscores the complicated nature of gender.
Themes
Rosie’s new job is in family practice, and it hardly seems like real medicine after so many years in the emergency room. Rosie is one of four equal partners. Elizabeth is quiet and guarded, and she doesn’t tell her coworkers much about herself. James is pleasant, too, and he and his husband spend every evening at happy hour and fine dining restaurants. Howie started the practice, and while he isn’t their boss, he hired each one of them. Howie insists on Rosie calling patients’ parents “Mom,” and he wants her to go to Thailand and set up a clinic so he can brag about it on the practice’s website. Rosie doesn’t have the flexibility she had in Wisconsin. Here, she is new and must prove herself all over again. She doesn’t think she can get fired for refusing Howie’s ridiculous requests, but she doesn’t want to find out.
Going to Thailand for Rosie would be very difficult. She would likely have to go for a long period of time, and being away from her kids and family for that long would be hard on everyone. It is unfair that Rosie feels like she has to do extra work beyond what she is contracted to do just to keep her job, and this situation also underscores the discrimination women can face in the workplace. For Rosie, going to Thailand is impossible because of her family, and she is clearly worried that she will be put in a position in which she will have to choose either her family or her job.
Themes
