Nontraditional Family In The Bean Trees

Turtle and Taylor end up living in Tucson, Arizona. Taylor finds a job and a place to stay. While she is in Tucson she starts to recognize that there are a lot of people in the world that have gone through much worse situations than she has. She tells Estevan, "I keep finding out that life can be hard in ways I never knew about" (141). She is growing out of her naiveness and learning more about the realities of life. This in turn is making her a more understanding and

Taylor receives no explanation from the woman who leaves Turtle with her, yet Taylor still takes on huge responsibility of caring for the child. Then, Taylor starts to notice a lot of things that makes her wandering what happened with the little girl. Taylor starts noticing Turtle’s smile while she was bathing her, and she also discovers that Turtle has been sexually molested and abused. By discovering these details of Turtle’s life, Tylor want to know more about Turtle’s life. She start working, but Tylor keeps thinking about Turtle. For example, in page (69) Tylor starts the work at Burger Derby, but after 6 days she quiet. She kept thinking about Tylor and who will take care of her while she is in work. That shows how Tylor start acting like mother when she left her job and tried to find a good place for her and

How does one define family? Throughout our readings, we find ourselves learning the ideas of theorist, concepts, and definitions to help us define and describe what family is. The family could possibly be what or who we say they are, or in simpler Bozett’s term, who the patient says it is! (Plumer, 2010). A family could consist possibly of values, roles, communication, environment, and relationships. Families may transition through all of these principles that either unites them or tears them apart. For instance, the movie Mrs. Doubtfire portrays these perceptions of what family is when family processes are shifted within a household. We will now discuss in more detail of the family assessment found throughout the movie starring the Hillards.

In today’s society, family is often attempted to be organized within a social structure. Within this structure family typically is consisted of mom, dad, daughter, and son. However, many families do not fit into this configuration. These families may include same sex couples, separated or divorced families, extended families, or even blended families. Even though these families may be happy and healthy, to many they are not considered real families. Going along with the topic of imperfect families, both Barbara Kingsolver and Richard Rodriguez try to break down the traditional family structure through their writing. While Kingsolver’s “Stone Soup” and Rodriguez’s “Family Values” explore the ideas of different family structures and traditional American values, “Stone Soup” breaks down what an actual family is like while “Family Values” expresses the value of family in different cultures.

Stephanie Coontz in “The Way We Weren’t: The Myth and Reality of the Traditional Family” emphasizes that the traditional and ideal nuclear family widespread in media and textbooks are false and far from reality. In fact, it is common to see more similarities to the traditional family consistent of “male breadwinner and nurturing mother” (1) today than in the past.

Family. What do you picture? Two married parents, their son and daughter, and maybe a dog, all living in a two story house in a nice suburban neighborhood. And who should blame you for picturing that? It’s been drilled into our minds all throughout our childhoods. Through our families, the tv, the books we read. But is this really all true? 50 percent of all marriages end in divorce and of that 50 percent, 46 percent are families. So why is this “perfect” family ideal so widespread? Author Barbara Kingsolver tries to explain this in her essay: ‘Stone Soup’. She claims it’s because society is so traditional and primitive in the way we idealize what a family is supposed to be: two married parents and their children. But that’s not really the case anymore. The main idea of her essay is that the definition of family needs to be reimagined to define more of what a family means, rather than what its terminology implies.

By fighting to save the most important part of her life, Taylor shows that she has realized what is truly important. When she decides not to discuss Turtle’s future in front of her, as though she simply property, Taylor’s renewed belief in small acts of kindness and the effect they can have on people, is shown. Once more, she knows that even small acts of compassion can have large impacts on the lives of others. The effects of Taylor’s epiphany are illustrated again when she agrees to drive Estevan and Esperanza to Oklahoma. Even though she does not want Estevan to leave, Taylor drives him and Esperanza to Oklahoma, risking fines and jail time in the process. When Mattie warns Taylor of the dangers of her plan, Taylor says, “Just stop it, okay? Estevan and Esperanza are my friends. And, even if they weren’t, I can’t see why I shouldn’t do this.” By saying this, Taylor’s belief in the importance of doing the right thing, even when it is dangerous, is displayed. Taylor’s morals have been transformed: bravery and integrity are now more important to her than safety and realism. She no longer withdraws from her friends and loved ones like she did after

In The Bean Trees, Taylor is consistently faced with a lack of choice. She decides to leave home, but on her way she stops at a bar and a woman puts a child in her car and leaves before Taylor can stop her. When she gets to a motel “[she] pulled off the pants and the diapers there were more bruises. Bruises and worse.” (31) The child abandoned had been sexually molested, making raising her a much harder burden since the child had experienced “a kind of misery [Taylor] could not imagine.” (31) Yet although the child, who Taylor names Turtle, is “just somebody [she] got stuck with” (70), she cares for her and she becomes like her own child. However, finding work and raising a child isn’t easy and “[she] was starting to go a little bit crazy. This is how it is when all the money you have can fit in one pocket, and you have no job, and no prospects.” (66) Taylor also realizes “that [her] whole life had been running along on dumb luck and [she] hadn’t even noticed.” She hadn’t been making any choices, just running with whatever life threw her way. Taylor finally realizes her luck has run out when she learns “[i]f a child has no legal guardian she becomes a ward of the state.” Turtle was not legally adopted by Taylor and therefore she could be taken away. Taylor now has the choice to either fight for Turtle or give up, but Taylor is convinced she doesn’t have a choice at all. Her friend Lou Ann calls her out on this, claiming “there’s got to be some way around them taking her, and

A family consists of people with mutual respect, love, and passions for one another, conveys Barbara Kingsolver in her essay called the “Stone Soup”. She believes that a family isn’t necessarily bound by traditional concepts of happy marriages, rather she insists that this is a relatively new ideal in our society. A nuclear family is a representation of normal families; Kingsolver disagrees with this concept, and understands that today's norm are the non traditional families of the world. She writes this essay reminding non traditional families that there is nothing they need be ashamed of, ascertaining the parents that their families are complete

Marietta Greer, also known as Taylor Greer in the book The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver, started a new life by leaving her home in Pittman County, Kentucky to avoid motherhood. Her life was full of ups, downs, blessings, hardships, dramatic events, and mixed feelings. The people she met in this new life such as Lou Ann, Mattie, Estevan, Esperanza, and especially Turtle, have created a positive outlook on Taylor’s life. Without ever meeting them, Taylor’s fresh new life would have been dull and confusing. Though there are also some memories that may have followed her as a fear, but it soon became a lucky asset to have in her life. The tractor tire, the photo of Turtle during their first night together, and Turtle’s adoption document are each a significant symbol of Taylor’s journey.

and strength of character help her move forward. Despite some moments of hesitation and self doubt she makes her choices with full knowledge of what she is doing and why. Being neither her real mother or legal guardian, if Taylor gets caught Turtle will certainly be taken away from her and put into the custody of foster parents. But, if she does nothing she will lose Turtle anyway.

(Quote Turtles first word). Taylor comes to the conclusion that like a flower being planted in a dirty place it can turn out beautiful. After her finding out about Turtle condition of Failure to Thrive she then will take Estevan and Esperanza with her to a Cherokee nation to find out more about both Turtles ancestry along with Taylor’s grandfathers. While being their Taylor understands how big a privilege she has being in the majority while she is in Arizona, because while being in the Cherokee nation she is a minority. Throughout the whole book Taylor constantly makes improvements on the way she looks at life and how although she didn’t want to have Turtle in the first place, having her and taking her to Arizona was the best decision she had

Taylor, Turtle When someone reads a book and they notice something important, they usually write it down, or mark in the book, in this novel turtles are that one word that makes everyone hooked from the start. In the novel The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver there are many symbols that get make the person reading it, to wonder what will go on, and turtles are the one symbol that made me want to read on. Taylor Greer the main character in the book lived in Oklahoma, and moved away to get away from having a baby, but when she finds her a new home, a baby finds her. She ends up naming the child Turtle, and she doesn’t even know how old she is.

In the novel The Bean Tree by Barbara Kingsolver, there is a girl named missy who lived in Kentucky with her mom. Missy leaves her mom to get a new life somewhere else. She also changes her name to Taylor on her journey. While on her journey she got handed a child from a stranger. She takes the child and continues Taylor's journey. Taylor finds a whole bunch of friends on her journey. This novel makes you ask to rethink your definition of “family” because on Taylor’s journey she meets a lot of friends that start to become family to her. Also when Taylor received Turtle, she started to make a family with Turtle without even knowing her. All of Taylor’s friends treated each other and helped each other just like they were family. That is how this

Families now a days can be made out of a group of random people working at the same job everyday with each other slowly but strongly building that family bond, therefore calling themselves “Family”. Examples of a typical family is a in the movie Moonstruck where everyone in that family is a son or daughter of someone in that house. A example of a not typical family is the skater crew in Dogtown and Z-Boys where all of them became a family without being related whatsoever. In Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the director shows family being a partnership between two completely different men.