It's a Family Affair: Choices in Kinship Configurations as Represented in Fried Green Tomatoes and Bastard Out of Carolina

Fictional representations of familial paradigms are changing. This discussion charts the variations that occur in family makeup; such as the single-parent, the lesbian parent, and the guardian parent households. While the nuclear family situation is missing from this selection, it is not absent from these novels. What is different in both Fried Green Tomatoes and Bastard out of Carolina is choice. People make choices concerning who they want to live with. Writers, like Flagg and Allison, make choices concerning their characters' familial configurations, but they do· not require their characters or their readers to determine that one should eradicate the other. By examining these specific novels, certain patterns and shifts in the familial paradigm, as represented in fiction begin to surface. These novels also exemplify how important it is to maintain family histories and the power of the storyteller.