Fannie Flagg

Fannie Flagg is an author that I both enjoy and admire. She has succeeded as an actress, a comedienne, a screenwriter, and an author. The tenacity and vitality she has shown in her careers and her personal life sends us the message that women are strong and capable people. She also uses her humor and storytelling ability to create characters that further that image and encourage women to be independent. She sends the message that if you want to accomplish something you must keep trying to overcome any obs

All of Flagg’s books feature women as the central characters. These women are either strong or in the process of becoming strong. Coming Attractions begins with the journal entries of an eleven-year-old and ends when she becomes the self-confident and free-spirited winner of the Miss Mississippi Contest. The young Daisy Fay writes, “I can do anything a boy can do. I can even beat up Michael. It must be terrible to be born a girl and know that your daddy really wanted a little boy” (76). When she is older, Daisy Fay attends a Catholic boarding school where she resents the fact that women are not allowed on the altar except to clean. After watching her favorite nun “nearly genuflect herself to death at the altar,” Daisy Fay says, “The next day I went in and walked all over that altar and didn’t genuflect once. Who says that priests are better than nuns?” (191).

Fannie Flagg’s first novel, Coming Attractions, was later released in paperback as Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man. In it, like all her books, she draws heavily on autobiographical themes. It was not until her success with Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café that she received recognition or financial reward for her writing. Of the time she was writing Fried Green Tomatoes she says, “I went through a bad financial period and almost lost a house . . . and yet I found out I was happier than I’d ever been because my priorities were straight and I was doing something I loved” (Hillard). After the re-release of Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man, it spent ten weeks on the New York Times paperback bestseller list, and Fried Green Tomatoes spent thirty-six weeks on the same list. When Universal Pictures released the film Fried Green Tomatoes, Flagg co-scripted the screenplay, receiving nominations for the Academy Award and Writers Guild of America Award, and winning the Scripters Award. She also received a Grammy Award nomination for best-spoken word for her narration of that novel on audiotape. When being asked why it took her twelve more years before the publication of her third novel, Welcome to the World, Baby Girl!, she said, “The movie was a huge hit – it scared the hell out of me” (ReadersOnly.com).

In Welcome to the World, Baby Girl!, Flagg tells the story of another strong woman, Dena Nordstrom, who has a mystery in her past. Flagg uses more autobiographical themes with Dena being a successful television anchorwoman in New York City for part of the book. This time, the small town in the book is in the Midwest instead of the South, but the messages are the same – to stand up for what you think is right and enjoy yourself along the way. When old Aunt Elner tells Dena that you never know what will happen from one minute to the next, she adds, “All the more reason to enjoy every one of them” (218). In Robert Plunket’s review of Welcome to the World, he says of Fannie Flagg, “Even when she prattles – and she prattles a great deal during this book – you are always aware that a star is at work. She has that gift that certain people from the theater have, of never boring the audience.” I think one could say the same of all her books.

Fannie Flagg was born September 21, 1941, as Patricia Neal, the daughter of a small business owner named William Neal. She lived in an apartment in Birmingham, Alabama as she was growing up. “From the time I was 6 years old I longed to be a writer,” says Flagg (Hillard). Her writing and show business career began in fifth grade when she wrote, produced and starred in a three-act comedy called “The Whoopee Girl,” which brought the audience to hysteria, but got her expelled from school for using the word “martini.”

While writing for Candid

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