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Part III: Vagina Shopping
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
Rosie packs a new wardrobe for Poppy, which she would have had to do anyway, since dresses aren’t allowed at the clinic. She asks Poppy if there is anything special she wants to bring to Thailand, but she says there isn’t. Rosie asks if she should call her Claude or Poppy. Rosie will accept her as either a son or a daughter, but Poppy has to tell her what that is. He says he is Claude. He has to be Claude, he says, it is his “punishment” for lying and trying to be something he isn’t.
Presumably, Poppy implies that Claude is her punishment for keeping her gender a secret, but this can be interpreted in a different way. Living as Claude is a lie, so being miserable is Poppy’s punishment. As most things Poppy does are, her words here are ambiguous.
Themes
Claude is more than willing to go to Thailand if it means he doesn’t have to go back to school, but Penn thinks Rosie is just trying to avoid him and their recent fight about vaginas. Rosie says she has to go to appease Howie, but Penn doubts she would ever lose her job. Rosie isn’t so sure. Plus, she says, the Thai clinic serves Burmese refugees, and it is important work. Sure, Penn says, but he still thinks Rosie needs “a break” from him. Yes, she agrees, she needs a break from him.
Penn may not want to believe it, but Rosie will very likely be fired if she doesn’t go to Thailand, which again points to the thinly veiled discrimination she faces as a woman in a male-dominated field. The Burmese refugees Rosie talks about refers to the 25,000 Myanmar (Burmese) nationals of Rohingya ethnicity who were forcibly removed from Myanmar (Burma) in 2015 and sent by boat to surrounding countries, like Thailand and Indonesia.
Themes
Rosie calls Camry at the airport and tells her that she and Claude are going to Thailand. After Camry expresses concern over diseases such as malaria and dengue fever, she asks what Penn will do without them. Rosie is sure he will be fine. After all, he is just writing instead of living their life. “Maybe,” Camry says, “he’s doing both.” Impossible, Rose says. The two things are “irreconcilable,” and Penn is just hoping for a “fairytale ending.” Rosie knows that Penn isn’t a realist, but that doesn’t mean reality doesn’t exist for everyone else.
Camry seems to believe that Penn can address their problems though writing, which again underscores the power of storytelling to persuade others and change the world. Rosie is a scientific woman, and she is failing to see the world the way Penn does. Stories and reality are not “irreconcilable,” Penn and Camry imply, which again illustrates that many things are not either/or but a bit of both.
Themes
