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Part I: Mapping
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
School starts on a Tuesday, so Poppy is allowed to have Aggie, Natalie, and Kim over on Sunday night for a sleep over. They try on all their clothes and fix their hair, because that is what girls do before the first day of the fifth grade, and now they are trying to summon Aggie’s dead grandfather on an Ouija board. After a while, they give up on Aggie’s grandpa and start asking the board questions about boys at school.
Frankel jumps into the future here, and the reader can infer that Poppy is, at least for the time being, a happy girl living in Seattle. Poppy has friends and has sleepovers, and she does all the cliché things girls do, like talk about boys.
Themes
Aggie is lucky, Poppy thinks, because no one else has a crush on the boy she likes. Natalie and Kim both like the same boy, but at least they have someone to talk about. Poppy doesn’t like anyone. Kim asks the Ouija board if Poppy will ever grow boobs, and they all laugh. Aggie tells Poppy that she is lucky and should hope she never gets them, and then Aggie says she will probably be the first one to get her period, too. The girls return to the Ouija board and ask it who will be the first to get their period, and when it doesn’t answer, they put it away.
From Kim’s comment about Poppy’s chest and Aggie’s question as to who will be the first to get their period, the reader can infer that Poppy’s friends do not know that she is transgender. Unlike her friends, Poppy doesn’t seem to be interested in any boys yet, which further suggests that Poppy’s sexuality and gender are separate and distinct.
Themes
Fourth grade sexual education isn’t about sex, it is more about boobs and periods, but the older kids say the real sex talk starts in fifth grade. Poppy, Aggie, Natalie, and Kim also know that the fifth grade is the last year they aren’t expected to shower after gym. Staring in the sixth grade, they have to shower in front of each other—naked—and the thought makes each one of them want to die of embarrassment. The four of them have been friends since Poppy was the new kid in the first grade, and they quickly became “the PANK club.” They are always together, and they tell each other everything, except, in Poppy’s case, for “one thing.”
Presumably, the “one thing” that Poppy has not told her friends is that she is transgender, but Poppy’s secret is only going to get harder to keep. Obviously, Poppy can’t shower in front of her classmates after gym class without giving away her secret. “The PANK club” is an acronym for the first letter of each of the girls’ names, which reflects how close they are and suggest that keeping secrets from one another is quite difficult.
Themes
