So Jeanine said we need to write a song about this panel and I said, 'We can't because there's not going to be a way to do it that people won't laugh at that character and I couldn't bear it.' And Jeanine said, 'We have to,' and then I said 'OK,' because I do what Jeanine tells me.īechdel: I came out by reading books, not by having actual experiences with other people.

I was very worried about how we would put this story and that character and specifically that moment onstage without triggering that ridicule, that sort of reflexive response. In mainstream culture, the way that it has often been expressed is as a stock character of ridicule. really worried about doing well was portraying butchness and portraying exactly what is meant by that and what is felt in that, because I think if you live inside of the world and the community where that gender expression has meaning, it's completely clear, but if you don't, it's very difficult to grasp. On writing ' Ring of Keys,' a song about the first time Bechdel saw a butch lesbian And I knew that that was completely unacceptable. In that moment, I recognized that woman: I identified with her I wanted her I wanted to be her. My father saw me looking at this woman and he whipped his head around and said, 'Is that how you want to look?' And there was so much going in that exchange. a much larger city than where we lived, and we were having lunch in a diner and this woman came in - this big, burly woman with short hair and men's clothes - and I was spellbound. On seeing a butch lesbian for the first time when she was about 9 years oldīechdel: We were in Philadelphia. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. When Alison comes out as homosexual herself in late adolescense, the denouement is swift, graphic - and redemptive.Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title Fun Home Subtitle A Family Tragicomic Author Alison Bechdel And yet, apart from assigned stints dusting caskets at the family-owned 'fun home,' as Alison and her brothers call it, the relationship achieves its most intimate expression through the shared code of books. Through narrative that is alternately heartbreaking and fiercely funny, we are drawn into a daughter's complex yearning for her father. Meet Alison's father, a historic preservation expert and obsessive restorer of the family's Victorian home, a third-generation funeral home director, a high school English teacher, an icily distant parent, and a closeted homosexual who, as it turns out, is involved with his male students and a family babysitter. Like Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, it's a story exhilaratingly suited to graphic memoir form. This breakout book by Alison Bechdel is a darkly funny family tale, pitch-perfectly illustrated with Bechdel's sweetly gothic drawings. A fresh and brilliantly told memoir from a cult favorite comic artist, marked by gothic twists, a family funeral home, sexual angst, and great books.

Alison bechdel graphic novel