Essays on Fun Home

2006

Alison Bechdel

Graphic novel, memoir

2006, by Alison Bechdel

Graphic novel, memoir

The novel chronicles the author's childhood and youth in rural Pennsylvania, United States, focusing on her complex relationship with her father.

The book addresses themes of sexual orientation, gender roles, suicide, emotional abuse, dysfunctional family life, and the role of literature in understanding oneself and one's family.

Alison Bechdel, Bruce Bechdel, Helen Bechdel, Joan, Roy, Mark, Pete

Bechdel states that her motivation for writing Fun Home was to reflect on why things turned out the way they did in her life. She reflects on her father's untimely death and whether Alison would have made different choices if she were in his position.[26] This motivation is present throughout as she contrasts Bruce's artifice in hiding things with Alison's free and open self.

Fun Home has been both a popular and critical success, and spent two weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list. The book also generated controversy, being challenged and removed from libraries due to its contents.

“I suppose that a lifetime spent hiding one's erotic truth could have a cumulative renunciatory effect. Sexual shame is in itself a kind of death.”
“Feminism is the theory. Lesbianism is the practice.”
“It's imprecise and insufficient, defining the homosexual as a person whose gender expression is at odds with his or her sex.”