Lurie Frankel’s This is How it Always is focuses on Claude, a boy who struggles with gender dysphoria—meaning his internal gender identity is at odds with his outward gender appearance—and discrimination and violence are, unfortunately, a major part of his life, both before and after transitioning into Poppy. Poppy’s parents, Rosie and Penn, keep a “no-fly list,” which identifies the kids Poppy shouldn’t play with because either the kids or their parents don’t quite understand Poppy’s gender. For instance, one girl’s dad makes an off-color joke about drag queens, and one woman asks Rosie way too many questions about Poppy’s genitals. When Poppy is just five years old, Nick, the father of one of Poppy’s friends, calls her a “faggot” and threatens her whole family with a gun. Poppy is not the only character to face violence and discrimination, and other members of the LGBTQ community face similar treatment in the novel, as do women more broadly. With the representation of violence and discrimination in This is How it Always is, Frankel highlights how those who are considered different from the mainstream are often subject to abuse, and how unfortunately such discrimination and violence seems inevitable.
It isn’t just Poppy who experiences discrimination and threats of violence, but other members of the LGBTQ community as well, which underscores the widespread discrimination against LGBTQ people within American society. Rosie is an emergency room physician, and one of her patients is Jane Doe, a transgender woman who is shot and nearly beaten to death by a group of fraternity boys at the local university. Chad, a fraternity boy, and his friends beat Jane because they discover that she is transgender, and their ignorance manifests as hate and violence. When everyone at school discovers Poppy’s secret, Mr. Tongo, a social worker and Rosie’s friend, asks Penn and Rosie how Poppy is handling being outed. Kids often aren’t kind to transgender kids, Mr. Tongo says, and many are bullied and beaten. According to Mr. Tongo, some 40% of transgender kids commit suicide because they are bullied so badly by other kids. At school, a boy named Derek McGuiness calls Poppy’s brother Roo “gay” and beats him up. Roo isn’t gay, but it really doesn’t matter. Derek assaults Roo because he thinks Roo is gay, which also reflects the violence and discrimination that the LGBTQ community faces.
Although the book largely focuses on the deep discrimination and hatred that the LGBTQ community faces in America, the book also highlights through the character of Rosie how women in general are often subject to similarly poor treatment. Rosie is constantly told that her career as a doctor is a “boy job,” and when she begins her residency as an emergency room physician, people are surprised that she doesn’t pick a more feminine specialty, like pediatrics or obstetrics. Because Rosie is a woman, it is implied that she can’t handle the grittiness of working in the emergency room. After Rosie and Penn are married and Rosie leaves the emergency room for private practice, James, one of the doctors she works with, says that he was wary about Rosie when she first came to the practice. Five kids is a lot, James says, implying that its Rosie’s responsibility as a woman to care for her kids herself (even though, as the book shows, her husband does a lot of the childrearing and housekeeping tasks). Rosie is shocked and says that James can’t hire people based on how many kids they have. Because Rosie is a woman and has five children, it is assumed that she can’t also be a talented doctor. Howie, the doctor who started the private practice and hired Rosie, tells her that she must “start pulling her weight” if she wants to keep her job. Rosie already has a full patient schedule and keeps emergency and on-call hours like the other (male) doctors at the practice, but Howie wants her to do more. If Rosie can’t because she has five kids and too many distractions at home, she will have to be a doctor somewhere else, Howie says. Rosie is forced to choose between her family and her career, a decision that many men aren’t forced to make.
Penn and Rosie know that there will always be people in the world who don’t understand Poppy. K, a transgender woman Rosie meets in Thailand, gives Rosie similar advice. K tells Rosie that Poppy will have to find the “middle way” and learn to live with those who don’t accept her. The novel ends in a positive and uplifting way, as Poppy finally embraces who she is, and her family is together and happy; however, Frankel’s message regarding the discrimination and abuse women and the LGBTQ community face is a bit more pessimistic. Many people face violence and discrimination in Frankel’s novel, and, as the title suggests, this is how it always is. All anyone can do is be aware, be guarded, and try their best to accept that the world will not radically change anytime soon.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Violence and Discrimination ThemeTracker
Violence and Discrimination Quotes in This Is How It Always Is
“Girls in fairy tales are losers,” said Roo.
“No they aren't,” said Claude.
“Yes they are. Not like losers. Losers. Girls in fairy tales are always losing stuff.”
“Nuh-uh,” said Claude.
“Yuh-huh. They lose their way in the woods or their shoe on the step or their hair even though they're in a tower with no door and their hair is like literally attached to their head.”
“Or their voice,” Ben put in. “Or their freedom or their family or their name. Or their identity. Like she can't be a mermaid anymore.”
“Or they lose being awake,” said Roo. “And then they just sleep and sleep and sleep. Boooring.”
Claude started crying. “A princess could do cool stuff. A princess could be better than Grumwald. She wouldn't have to sleep or lose her shoe.”
“You’re a scientist, Rosie. Women aren’t scientists. So that goes in the boy column. You’re a doctor—an ER doctor, not a girly one like pediatrician or gynecology. So that goes in the boy column too. Your so-called husband is a writer, an artist, and not the kind who makes money. The other kind. He cooks dinner—” [...].
“Why are you using the boys’ bathroom?”
“Because I'm a boy?”
She took another deep breath. “Then why are you wearing a dress?”
Claude was confused. They'd been through this. “I like to wear a dress.”
“Little boys do not wear dresses.” Miss Appleton tried to channel her usual patience. “Little girls wear dresses. If you are a little boy, you can't wear a dress. If you are a little girl, you have to use the nurse’s bathroom.”
“But little girls use the girls' bathroom,” said Claude.
“But you're not a little girl,” Miss Appleton said through her teeth.
“Meaning if he thinks he is a girl, he has gender dysphoria, and we will accommodate that. If he just wants to wear a dress, he is being disruptive and must wear normal clothes.”
“I’m not sure either Claude or I even understand the distinction you’re making up as you go along here,” said Penn.
“It’s confusing,” the district representative acknowledged, “for Miss Appleton and for the children and clearly also for Claude. No one knows how to treat this child. Do we say he or she? Does Claude line up with the boys or the girls? Why is his hair still short? Why hasn’t he change his name?”
“He cannot be all of the above in kindergarten, and he cannot be none of the above in kindergarten. In kindergarten, a child can only be a he or a she, a boy or a girl. Kindergartens are not set up for ambiguity.”
“Maybe they should be,” said Penn. “The world is an ambiguous place.”
“Not for a five-year-old. For a five-year-old, the world is very black and white. It’s fair or it’s unfair. It’s fun or its torture. There are not disgusting cookies. There are not delicious vegetables.”
Rosie hated that calendar. Penn adored it. To Penn, it represented a triumph, difficult things overcome and implemented. Maybe the transition from Claude had been daunting and fraught, but here was Poppy, loved, friended, present, no longer disappearing off the page. He considered the calendar a hard-won trophy. To Rosie, it bespoke people's cloying, pandering, PC bullshit and a strange Poppy cachet. Having status, she warned Penn, was not the same as having friends. Maybe parents just wanted their kids to invite Poppy over so they could gossip to their own friends or make a big show of being open-minded and tolerant. Maybe the kids wanted to play with Poppy because they were curious about him rather than because they liked him. And what would they do about invitations to sleepovers? What would they do when these kids stopped being sweet little kindergarteners and started being hormone-crazed, mean-spirited, cruel-intentioned, peer-pressuring, pill-popping, gun-toting teenagers?
“Did you threaten him?” said Penn.
“Who?”
“Poppy.”
“Ain’t a him, friend.”
“Did you threaten our child?” Rosie did not want to get diverted into semantics and pronoun battles. There was something more at stake here.
“I told him we don't play with faggots, we don't play with girls, we don't play with boys dressed as girls, and he was no longer welcome in our home or anywhere near my kid—not at the park, not at school, not on the playground, nowhere.”
The instant after that Chad’s hand recoiled and then all of him. He stumbled up and back and away. His look in that moment wasn’t anger. It was pain. He was hurt. That she’d lied? That she’d tricked him? That he’d liked someone—something—as disgusting as she was? Maybe he was hurt that he’d lost her. Maybe he didn’t have to. She reached out to explain. The words on her lips were, “I’m…” What? I’m sorry? I’m Jane? I’m not what you think?
But she didn’t get them out. Whereas every moment leading up to this one this night stood crystalline and perfect, what happened next was a blur. He hit her across the mouth. He hit her face. He called out and lights went on in the house and guys came, guys arrived, one after another. They laughed. They yelled. They spit. They pushed her to the ground. They kicked her. She struggled. She fought back. She was strong. She had a single moment—just one—where she thought: I’m as strong as you are. One of them, maybe, but all of them together, no. Still, they must have been scared of her because feet turned to fists, and then someone pulled the knife out of the spent watermelon.
Later, when the whole story came out, or as much of it as could be pieced together, it turned out it was Chad who'd gotten the gun, that having kicked off what quickly got out of control, he couldn't get his fraternity brothers off Jane Doe. He screamed and pulled at the backs of their shirts and tried to push them off her and away, but they wouldn't listen anymore, couldn't listen anymore, and so he'd gone into the house and into the room of a brother he knew kept a handgun in his nightstand. He'd meant to fire it into the air or something to get everyone's attention, but he missed. It was his first time with a gun. An inch to the left, and it would have been over instantly. He’d very nearly killed Jane Doe. He'd very nearly killed her anyway. He'd also very nearly saved her life. But not quite.
“Well, it certainly doesn’t sound like any else’s business, does it? Don’t think of Poppy as Claude under wraps. Think of Poppy as girl with a penis, a girl with an unusual medical history. Do you usually discuss what’s in children’s pants with the other moms on the playground?”
“You know, it used to be there were no transgender kids. Your son would come to you in a dress, and you'd say, ‘No son of mine!’ or ‘Boys don't wear dresses!’ and that would be the end of it. That kid would grow up, and if he made it through childhood and if he made it through puberty and if he made it through young adulthood, maybe, if he were lucky, he’d eventually find his way to a community of people who understood what no one ever had, and he would slowly change his clothes and hair, and he would slowly change his name and pronouns, and he would slowly test the waters of being female, and over years and decades, he might become a she. Or he might kill himself long before he got there. The rate of suicide for these kids is over forty percent, you know.”
“The rest of us manage to balance work and family.” He wasn't yelling; he was scolding, which was worse. “It's not fair that we should suffer because you are incapable of doing so.”
Rosie rolled her eyes. “How are you suffering, Howie?”
“I have to recap Monday Morning Meeting before I've even gotten through it. And I have to take shit if you're asked to do one thing outside seeing patients.”
“I'm pretty sure I'm the one taking shit, but I'll be in charge of breakfast again.”
“Attagirl.”
“I’m not a girl.”
“I don’t want anything. I want . . . I only want to do whatever’s best for her.”
“Me too. Of course mc too. If we knew what that was. But unfortunately that exceeds my skill set. That's not prognosis. That's prognostication. We need a seer, not a doctor.”
“Then that’s my skill set,” said Penn.
“You can see the future?”
“It's the stuff of fairy tales, not hospitals.”
“That's a nice place to be,” Rosie admitted, “but it’s not real.”
“Sure it is,” said Penn. But Rosic rolled over and went to sleep.
“Listen Rosie, I know you've got some shit going on at home. I don't want to bust your balls. But you're just not pulling your weight around here.”
“Howie, how am I not pulling my weight around here? I keep thirty-five appointment hours every week, same as you. I maintain emergency appointment slots and on-call hours, same as you. My patient load is full, same as yours.”
“How can you say you’re keeping thirty-five patient hours every week? You've cancelled all your appointments since Monday.”
“Once. One week. This week I've had to cancel appointments—all of which have been rescheduled, and for each of which will I carve out time. In the four years I've been working here, this is the first time I've had to reschedule more than a day's worth of appointments. People get sick, Howie, people's families get sick, even doctors’. That's why we have sick leave and personal leave and family leave.”
“Is that what's happened this week? Sick kid?”
Rosie nodded but failed to elaborate.
“Penn can't take care of this? He doesn't even work.”
“Very shelter life in palace so ignorant of poverty, sickness, old age, death. Then he go out into world and learn. Then he help. That is important part. Once he learn, he listen and tell, he help. He leave family, leave palace, leave being a prince.” Rosie nodded along. This part sounded familiar. “He learn about the world and the people. He meditate to learn to be. He give up all food and water and house, but then his body too loud to achieve peace so he learn again: too little as bad as too much. He teach, tell his story, help people see truth. He say be kind and forgive, honest and share. He say everything change so okay. He say middle way. He enlighten. That is the story. Learn mistake and fix and tell. Not-knowing to knowing. Even the Buddha You see?”
“You have to tell. It can’t be a secret. Secrets make everyone alone. Secrets lead to panic like that night at the restaurant. When you keep it a secret, you get hysterical. You get to thinking you’re the only one there is who’s like you, who’s both and neither and betwixt, who forges a path every day between selves, but that's not so. When you're alone keeping secrets, you get fear. When you tell, you get magic. Twice.”
“Twice?”
“You find out you're not alone. And so does everyone else. That’s how everything gets better. You share your secret, and I'll do the rest. You share your secret, and you change the world.”
