Fun Home ★★★★☆

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (Click Here To Buy)

★★★★☆

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel is a memoir of a lesbian woman who finds out that her dad was gay after he’s dead. The story is told as a graphic novel.

I’ve been wanting to read this book for quite some time and the library didn’t have it, so I finally just bought a used copy.

Bechdel was in college when she first realized she was a lesbian and she was shocked when her mother's response was to tell her that her father was also gay. It was only a short time later that he was dead and so Bechdel looks back on her childhood in an attempt to understand both herself and her father more deeply. In her reflection, Bechdel picks up on both the fine details of her childhood, from her dad's impeccable style and his desire to push that onto her - to more monumental events such as his overt closeness with younger men. In addition to illustrating each page, Bechdel also incorporates old letters from her parents as well as her own childhood journal.

Comics/graphic novels exist on another level for me, it's like not only did Bechdel write a memoir reflecting on her relationship with her dad, which would have been good in and of itself, she also then drew it, hundreds of times. That's talent. Plus I just found out this is a musical, whaaatt?!

Another noteworthy aspect about Bechdel is that she is THE Bechdel who created the Bechdel test, which is about women in fiction. Basically for a work of fiction to pass the test, the work must 1) have at least two women in it, who 2) talk to each other, about 3) something other than a man. This idea was in another one of her comics, Dykes to Watch Out For.

If you liked Fun Home, I also recommend I’m in Seattle, Where Are You? by Martada Gzar, Marbles by Ellen Forney, In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado, and Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner.

#happyreading

Ms.Bjork