Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic

Alison Bechdel (1960) is an American cartoonist best known for her graphic novel memoirs and long-running comic strip Dykes to Watch out For. She was born in Beech Creek, Pennsylvania and earned her bachelor’s degree in studio art and art history from Oberlin College in 1981. She is also the creator of the “Bechdel Test,” a popular barometer for representation of women in fiction. Bechdel’s work is largely characterized by queer and feminist themes.

Bechdel’s role in the narrative of her memoir is two-pronged. Fun Home is about Bruce Bechdel as much as it is about Alison herself. Thus, she is simultaneously the main character of the story and an observer of the main character of her father. Fun Home itself is structured as a series of Alison’s memories reenacted in medias res in conjunction with her retrospective observations in adjoining captions. Her narration is academic, thorough, and ponderous, which emphasizes her portrayal of herself as reflective to the point of neurosis. She also presents herself as almost compulsively honest. Her frank and open exploration of her lesbianism stands in stark contrast to her father’s closeted life as a gay man.