Belinda and Cody Phipps appear to be a typical Midwestern couple: teenage sweethearts now married with children and a luxurious home. Typical except that Cody is in almost every respect an outsider - "rich and black and different," in the words of Belinda, who fin's he'self attracted to a (white) former classmate. As the battle for her affections is waged, Belinda and Cody frankly question the foundation of their initial attraction, opening the door to a swath of bigotry, deception, and betrayal.
Staging his work on a continually shifting moral ground where nothing is sacred and the unexpected is a given, LaBute unblinkingly challenges the reader's received notions of gender, ethnicity, and even love itself. Powerful, profane, and above all unpredictable, This Is How It Goes is a devastating exploration of the myriad ways in which the wild card of race is played by both black and white in America.