Here's why Raina chose This Is How It Always Is...
Growing up, my family and family friends were not supportive of my gender questioning and queer sexuality. This year, as my four-year-old child began challenging the accuracy of the sex that was assigned at her/his birth, this book gave me a new perspective on what it means to try and keep a whole family safe and happy.
About the book
This Is How It Always Is
By Laurie Frankel
This is how a family keeps a secret…and how that secret ends up keeping them.
This is how a family lives happily ever after…until happily ever after becomes complicated.
This is how children change…and then change the world.
This is Claude. He’s five years old, the youngest of five brothers, and loves peanut butter sandwiches. He also loves wearing a dress and dreams of being a princess.
When he grows up, Claude says, he wants to be a girl.
Rosie and Penn want Claude to be whoever Claude wants to be. They’re just not sure they’re ready to share that with the world. Soon the entire family is keeping Claude’s secret. Until one day it explodes. This Is How It Always Is is a novel about revelations, transformations, fairy tales, and family. And it’s about the ways this is how it always is: Change is always hard and miraculous and hard again, parenting is always a leap into the unknown with crossed fingers and full hearts, children grow but not always according to plan. And families with secrets don’t get to keep them forever.
-- Goodreads
"Sharp and surprising. This is a wonderfully contradictory story―heartwarming and generous, yet written with a wry sensibility." ―Publishers Weekly starred review
An interview with the author
About the reader
Raina Mast, Spanish
Riana previously recommended:
- Sacred Hoops by Phil Jackson