For instance, there are some scenes involving the Ku Klux Klan, which attempt to differentiate between white men who joined up to dance around in sheets and be silly and the white men who participated in the KKK’s hateful and violent activities. There’s a lot about the novel that’s highly problematic in contemporary terms, but that means well, and it’s best to read the book as a product of its time and as progressive for the Alabama that is being both admired and critiqued in its pages. These characters mainly appear in the part of the plot set in the past, except for Ninny, who is in a nursing home in the 1980s where she meets Evalyn Couch, a woman who becomes her friend and to whom Ninny tells large portions of Whistle Stop’s history. The plot moves back and forth in time, focusing in on a few intertwined families: the white Threadgoodes, and specifically daughter Idgie and married-into-the-family Ninny Big George and Onzell, an African American married couple who work in different capacities for the family, and Big George’s mother, Sipsey and, along the sidelines, Dot Weems, who comments on the goings on in her town newsletter. Random House | 1987 | 400 ppįried Green Tomatoes is about Whistle Stop, a small town in Alabama, the kind of place where everyone knows everyone and is in everybody else’s business. It took so long before I could read it, though, that by the time I did I’d forgotten all about the queer element and got to experience the surprise and delight that comes with discovering queer undertones for oneself.

She’d told me that I would love the book, and gave me her copy, inscribed with a beautiful note. Recently, with a surprising bit of free time on my hands, I finally turned to a queer classic that was recommended to me by a dear friend. Wildnessįried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe b y Fannie Flagg - Ilana Masad

The wildness logo, a stylised W that looks like two upside-down mountain peaks.

Fannie flagg fried green tomatoes