ABSTRACT
No matter how many communes anybody invents, the family always creeps back.
Margaret Mead, Encarta Book of Quotations, 2000
INTRODUCTION
In her novel, Paradise, Toni Morrison (1999) describes Seneca, a young woman who visits her boyfriend in prison; he asks her to request money he needs from his mother. After a long bus trip, Seneca arrives at his mother’s home to find her angry at her son, refusing to give the money bequeathed to her by her husband to “somebody who drove a car over a child and left it there, even . . . her only son” (p. 133). Seneca defends her boyfriend; Mrs. Turtle (his mother) dismisses this with: “I’ve known him all his life” (p. 133). Seneca leaves but decides to return to the house to ask Mrs. Turtle if she might use the phone.
