Family Family

All of Laurie Frankel’s books are about non-traditional families, and she intentionally finds ways to complicate the storyline to reflect a more diverse portrayal of family in books. In Frankel’s widely acclaimed novel, This Is How It Always Is (2017), Frankel examines a family with a transgender child. The book reflects Frankel’s own experience with her adopted daughter, who is transgender.

Frankel also explores the challenges of adoption in Family Family based on her experiences. She describes adoption as a lovely but challenging process providing great joy. For example, when they adopted their daughter, Frankel and her husband thought their most significant challenge would be exposing her to her Korean culture. In her Author’s Note, she describes their learning curve and the impossibility of fully preparing for the challenges. Since there is no single right way to parent a child, Frankel argues there should be more diverse representations of families and parenting in books to reflect that family is complicated and messy and that sometimes kids need more than love to survive and thrive.

Frankel says there isn't a lack of representation for adoption in literature, but claims that most of it is negative. She acknowledges trauma and heartache exist in some adoption stories, such as her characters