Hubbry Logo
Fun HomeFun HomeMain
Open search
Fun Home
Community hub
Fun Home
logo
7 pages, 0 posts
0 subscribers
Be the first to start a discussion here.
Be the first to start a discussion here.
Fun Home
Fun Home
Fun Home
View on Wikipedia
from Wikipedia

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic is a 2006 graphic memoir by the American cartoonist Alison Bechdel, author of the comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For. It 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.

Key Information

Writing and illustrating Fun Home took seven years, in part because of Bechdel's laborious artistic process, which includes photographing herself in poses for each human figure.[1][2][3][4] Fun Home has been the subject of numerous academic publications in areas such as biography studies and cultural studies as part of a larger turn towards serious academic investment in the study of comics/sequential art.[5]

Fun Home has been both a popular and critical success, and spent two weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list.[6][7] In The New York Times Sunday Book Review, Sean Wilsey called it "a pioneering work, pushing two genres (comics and memoir) in multiple new directions."[8] Several publications named Fun Home as one of the best books of 2006; it was also included in several lists of the best books of the 2000s.[9] It was nominated for several awards, including the National Book Critics Circle Award and three Eisner Awards (winning the Eisner Award for Best Reality-Based Work).[9][10] A French translation of Fun Home was serialized in the newspaper Libération; the book was an official selection of the Angoulême International Comics Festival and has been the subject of an academic conference in France.[11][12][13] Fun Home also generated controversy, being challenged and removed from libraries due to its contents.[14][15][16][17]

In 2013, a musical adaptation of Fun Home at The Public Theater enjoyed multiple extensions to its run,[18][19] with book and lyrics written by Obie Award-winning playwright Lisa Kron, and score composed by Tony Award-nominated Jeanine Tesori. The production, directed by Sam Gold, was called "the first mainstream musical about a young lesbian."[20] As a musical theatre piece, Fun Home was a finalist for the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, while winning the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Musical, the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Musical, and the Obie Award for Musical Theater.[21][22][23][24] The Broadway production opened in April 2015[25] and earned twelve nominations at the 69th Tony Awards, winning the Tony Award for Best Musical.

Background

[edit]

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. The process of writing Fun Home required many references to literary works and archives to both accurately write and draw the scenes. As Bechdel wrote the book, she would reread the sources of her literary references, and this attention to detail in her references led to the development of each chapter having a different literary focus.[27] On the process of writing the book, Bechdel says, "It was such a huge project: six or seven years of drawing and excavating. It was sort of like living in a trance."[28]

Fun Home is drawn in black line art with a gray-blue ink wash.[2] Sean Wilsey wrote that Fun Home's panels "combine the detail and technical proficiency of R. Crumb with a seriousness, emotional complexity and innovation completely its own."[8] Writing in the Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide, Diane Ellen Hamer contrasted "Bechdel's habit of drawing her characters very simply and yet distinctly" with "the attention to detail that she devotes to the background, those TV shows and posters on the wall, not to mention the intricacies of the funeral home as a recurring backdrop."[29] Bechdel told an interviewer for The Comics Journal that the richness of each panel of Fun Home was very deliberate:

It's very important for me that people be able to read the images in the same kind of gradually unfolding way as they're reading the text. I don't like pictures that don't have information in them. I want pictures that you have to read, that you have to decode, that take time, that you can get lost in. Otherwise what's the point?[30]

Alison Bechdel took photographs of herself posing as each character, to use as reference in her drawing. Here, she poses for a drawing of her father.

Bechdel wrote and illustrated Fun Home over a seven-year period.[1] Her meticulous artistic process made the task of illustration slow. She began each page by creating a framework in Adobe Illustrator, on which she placed the text and drew rough figures.[2][3] She used extensive photo reference and, for many panels, posed for each human figure herself, using a digital camera to record her poses.[2][3][4][31] Bechdel also used photo reference for background elements. For example, to illustrate a panel depicting fireworks seen from a Greenwich Village rooftop on July 4, 1976, she used Google Images to find a photograph of the New York skyline taken from that particular building in that period.[3][32][33] She also painstakingly copied by hand many family photographs, letters, local maps and excerpts from her own childhood journal, incorporating these images into her narrative.[32] After using the reference material to draw a tight framework for the page, Bechdel copied the line art illustration onto plate finish Bristol board for the final inked page, which she then scanned into her computer.[2][3] The gray-blue ink wash for each page was drawn on a separate page of watercolor paper, and combined with the inked image using Photoshop.[2][3][31] Bechdel chose the bluish wash color for its flexibility, and because it had "a bleak, elegiac quality" which suited the subject matter.[34] Bechdel attributes this detailed creative process to her "barely controlled obsessive-compulsive disorder".[32][35]

Plot summary

[edit]
A panel from Fun Home depicting
Bruce (left) and Alison Bechdel (right).

The narrative of Fun Home is non-linear and recursive.[36] Incidents are told and re-told in the light of new information or themes.[37] Bechdel describes the structure of Fun Home as a labyrinth, "going over the same material, but starting from the outside and spiraling in to the center of the story."[38] In an essay on memoirs and truth in the academic journal PMLA, Nancy K. Miller explains that as Bechdel revisits scenes and themes "she re-creates memories in which the force of attachment generates the structure of the memoir itself."[39] Additionally, the memoir derives its structure from allusions to various works of literature, Greek myth and visual arts; the events of Bechdel's family life during her childhood and adolescence are presented through this allusive lens.[36] Miller notes that the narratives of the referenced literary texts "provide clues, both true and false, to the mysteries of family relations."[39]

The memoir focuses on Bechdel's family, and is centered on her relationship with her father, Bruce. Bruce was a funeral director and high school English teacher in Beech Creek, where Alison and her siblings grew up. The book's title comes from the family nickname for the funeral home, the family business in which Bruce grew up and later worked; the phrase also refers ironically to Bruce's tyrannical domestic rule.[40] Bruce's two occupations are reflected in Fun Home's focus on death and literature.[41]

In the beginning of the book, the memoir exhibits Bruce's obsession with restoring the family's Victorian home.[41] His obsessive need to restore the house is connected to his emotional distance from his family, which he expressed in coldness and occasional bouts of abusive rage.[41][42] This emotional distance, in turn, is connected with his being a closeted homosexual.[29] Bruce had homosexual relationships in the military and with his high school students; some of those students were also family friends and babysitters.[43] At the age of 44, two weeks after his wife requested a divorce, he stepped into the path of an oncoming Sunbeam Bread truck and was killed.[44] Although the evidence is equivocal, Alison concludes that her father died by suicide.[41][45][31]

The story also deals with Alison's own struggle with her sexual identity, reaching a catharsis in the realization that she is a lesbian and her coming out to her parents.[41][46] The memoir frankly examines her sexual development, including transcripts from her childhood diary, anecdotes about masturbation, and tales of her first sexual experiences with her girlfriend, Joan.[47] In addition to their common homosexuality, Alison and Bruce share obsessive-compulsive tendencies and artistic leanings, albeit with opposing aesthetic senses: "I was Spartan to my father's Athenian. Modern to his Victorian. Butch to his nelly. Utilitarian to his aesthete."[48] This opposition was a source of tension in their relationship, as both tried to express their dissatisfaction with their given gender roles: "Not only were we inverts, we were inversions of each other. While I was trying to compensate for something unmanly in him, he was attempting to express something feminine through me. It was a war of cross-purposes, and so doomed to perpetual escalation."[49] However, shortly before Bruce's death, he and his daughter have a conversation in which Bruce confesses some of his sexual history; this is presented as a partial resolution to the conflict between father and daughter.[50]

At several points in the book, Bechdel questions whether her decision to come out as a lesbian was one of the triggers for her father's suicide.[39][51] This question is never answered definitively, but Bechdel closely examines the connection between her father's closeted sexuality and her own open lesbianism, revealing her debt to her father in both positive and negative lights.[39][41][31]

Themes

[edit]

Bechdel describes her journey of discovering her own sexuality: "My realization at nineteen that I was a lesbian came about in a manner consistent with my bookish upbringing."[52] Yet, hints of her sexual orientation arose early in her childhood; she wished "for the right to exchange [her] tank suit for a pair of shorts" in Cannes[53] and for her brothers to call her Albert instead of Alison on one camping trip.[54] Her father also exhibited homosexual behaviors, but the revelation of this made Bechdel feel uneasy. "I'd been upstaged, demoted from protagonist in my own drama to comic relief in my parents' tragedy".[55] Father and daughter handled their issues differently. Bechdel chose to accept the fact, before she had a lesbian relationship, but her father hid his sexuality.[56] He was afraid of coming out, as illustrated by "the fear in his eyes" when the conversation topic comes dangerously close to homosexuality.[57]

In addition to sexual orientation, the memoir touches on the theme of gender identity. Bechdel had viewed her father as "a big sissy"[58] while her father constantly tried to change his daughter into a more feminine person throughout her childhood.

The underlying theme of death is also portrayed. Unlike most young people, the Bechdel children have a tangible relationship with death because of the family mortuary business. Alison ponders whether her father's death was an accident or suicide, and finds it more likely that he killed himself purposefully.[59]

Allusions

[edit]

The allusive literary references used in Fun Home are not merely structural or stylistic: Bechdel writes, "I employ these allusions ... not only as descriptive devices, but because my parents are most real to me in fictional terms. And perhaps my cool aesthetic distance itself does more to convey the Arctic climate of our family than any particular literary comparison."[60] Bechdel, as the narrator, considers her relationship to her father through the myth of Daedalus and Icarus.[61] As a child, she confused her family and their Gothic Revival home with the Addams Family seen in the cartoons of Charles Addams.[62] Bruce Bechdel's suicide is discussed with reference to Albert Camus' novel A Happy Death and essay The Myth of Sisyphus.[63] His careful construction of an aesthetic and intellectual world is compared to The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the narrator suggests that Bruce Bechdel modeled elements of his life after Fitzgerald's, as portrayed in the biography The Far Side of Paradise.[64] His wife Helen is compared with the protagonists of the Henry James novels Washington Square and The Portrait of a Lady.[65] Helen Bechdel was an amateur actress, and plays in which she acted are also used to illuminate aspects of her marriage. She met Bruce Bechdel when the two were appearing in a college production of The Taming of the Shrew, and Alison Bechdel intimates that this was "a harbinger of my parents' later marriage".[66] Helen Bechdel's role as Lady Bracknell in a local production of The Importance of Being Earnest is shown in some detail; Bruce Bechdel is compared with Oscar Wilde.[67] His homosexuality is also examined with allusion to Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time.[68] The father and daughter's artistic and obsessive-compulsive tendencies are discussed with reference to E. H. Shepard's illustrations for The Wind in the Willows.[69] Bruce and Alison Bechdel exchange hints about their sexualities by exchanging memoirs: the father gives the daughter Earthly Paradise, an autobiographical collection of the writings of Colette; shortly afterwards, in what Alison Bechdel describes as "an eloquent unconscious gesture", she leaves a library copy of Kate Millett's memoir Flying for him.[70] Finally, returning to the Daedalus myth, Alison Bechdel casts herself as Stephen Dedalus and her father as Leopold Bloom in James Joyce's Ulysses, with parallel references to the myth of Telemachus and Odysseus.[71]

The chapter headings, too, are all literary allusions.[72] The first chapter, "Old Father, Old Artificer", refers to a line in Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and the second, "A Happy Death", invokes the Camus novel. "That Old Catastrophe" is a line from Wallace Stevens's "Sunday Morning", and "In the Shadow of the Young Girls in Flower" is the literal translation of the title of one of the volumes of Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time, which is usually given in English as Within a Budding Grove.

In addition to the literary allusions which are explicitly acknowledged in the text, Bechdel incorporates visual allusions to television programs and other items of pop culture into her artwork, often as images on a television in the background of a panel.[29] These visual references include the film It's a Wonderful Life, Bert and Ernie of Sesame Street, the Smiley Face, Yogi Bear, Batman, the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote, the resignation of Richard Nixon and The Flying Nun.[29][73]

Analysis

[edit]

Heike Bauer, a professor at the University of London, categorizes Fun Home as part of the queer transnational archive for its contribution towards the "felt experiences" of the LGBTQ community.[26] Bauer argues that books provide a relatable source, or a felt experience, as Alison uses literature to understand her own feelings in a homophobic society.[26] Bauer notes that as Alison finds relatable literature for her experiences, Fun Home itself becomes a similar outlet for its readers by increasing representation of LGBTQ literature.[26]

Valerie Rohy, an English professor at the University of Vermont, questions the authenticity of Alison's archives in the book.[74] Rohy explores how Alison uses her diary in her childhood and readings in her young adulthood to both document her life and learn about herself through written works. On the uncertainty relating to Bruce's cause of death, Rohy says Alison concludes it to be a suicide to fill in her knowledge gap of the situation, similar to her use of books to fill in gaps in her own understanding of her childhood.[74]

Judith Kegan Gardiner, a professor of English and Gender and Women's Studies at the University of Illinois, Chicago, views Fun Home as queer literature that bends the literary norms of the graphic novel genre,[75] arguing Bechdel combines both tragedy, normally associated with men, and humor, normally associated with women, by discussing her father's death using a comic book style and dark humor. Gardiner argues Bechdel takes control of creating an open culture for lesbian feminist work through Fun Home by focusing less on Bruce's wrongdoings regarding minors, and more on the tragedy faced by Alison and the guilt towards his subsequent death after her coming out. She also says that by breaking the gender norms of the genre, particularly within lesbian and gay literature, Fun Home has dramatically affected representation.

Publication and reception

[edit]

Fun Home was first printed in hardcover by Houghton Mifflin (Boston, New York City) on June 8, 2006.[76] This edition appeared on the New York Times' Hardcover Nonfiction bestseller list for two weeks, covering the period from June 18 to July 1, 2006.[6][7] It continued to sell well, and by February 2007 there were 55,000 copies in print.[77] A trade paperback edition was published in the United Kingdom by Random House under the Jonathan Cape imprint on September 14, 2006; Houghton Mifflin published a paperback edition under the Mariner Books imprint on June 5, 2007.[76][78]

The French edition of Fun Home, published by Éditions Denoël

In the summer of 2006, a French translation of Fun Home was serialized in the Paris newspaper Libération (which had previously serialized Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi).[11] This translation, by Corinne Julve and Lili Sztajn, was subsequently published by Éditions Denoël on October 26, 2006.[79] In January 2007, Fun Home was an official selection of the Angoulême International Comics Festival.[12] In the same month, the Anglophone Studies department of the Université François Rabelais, Tours sponsored an academic conference on Bechdel's work, with presentations in Paris and Tours.[13] At this conference, papers were presented examining Fun Home from several perspectives: as containing "trajectories" filled with paradoxical tension; as a text interacting with images as a paratext; and as a search for meaning using drag as a metaphor.[80][81][82] These papers and others on Bechdel and her work were later published in the peer-reviewed journal GRAAT (Groupe de Recherches Anglo-Américaines de Tours, or Tours Anglo-American Research Group).[83][84]

An Italian translation was published by Rizzoli in January 2007.[85][86] In Brazil, Conrad Editora published a Portuguese translation in 2007.[87] A German translation was published by Kiepenheuer & Witsch in January 2008.[88] The book has also been translated into Hungarian, Korean, and Polish,[89] and a Chinese translation has been scheduled for publication.[90]

In Spring 2012, Bechdel and literary scholar Hillary Chute co-taught a course at the University of Chicago titled "Lines of Transmission: Comics and Autobiography".[91]

Reviews and awards

[edit]

The Times of London described Fun Home as "a profound and important book;" Salon.com called it "a beautiful, assured piece of work;" and The New York Times ran two separate reviews and a feature on the memoir.[8][41][92][93][94] In one New York Times review, Sean Wilsey called Fun Home "a pioneering work, pushing two genres (comics and memoir) in multiple new directions" and "a comic book for lovers of words".[8] Jill Soloway, writing in the Los Angeles Times, praised the work overall but commented that Bechdel's reference-heavy prose is at times "a little opaque".[95] Similarly, a reviewer in The Tyee felt that "the narrator's insistence on linking her story to those of various Greek myths, American novels and classic plays" was "forced" and "heavy-handed".[33] By contrast, the Seattle Times' reviewer wrote positively of the book's use of literary reference, calling it "staggeringly literate".[96] The Village Voice said that Fun Home "shows how powerfully—and economically—the medium can portray autobiographical narrative. With two-part visual and verbal narration that isn't simply synchronous, comics presents a distinctive narrative idiom in which a wealth of information may be expressed in a highly condensed fashion."[36]

Alison Bechdel at a London signing for Fun Home

Several publications listed Fun Home as one of the best books of 2006, including The New York Times, Amazon.com, The Times of London, New York magazine and Publishers Weekly, which ranked it as the best comic book of 2006.[97][98][99][100][101][102] Salon.com named Fun Home the best nonfiction debut of 2006, admitting that they were fudging the definition of "debut" and saying, "Fun Home shimmers with regret, compassion, annoyance, frustration, pity and love—usually all at the same time and never without a pervasive, deeply literary irony about the near-impossible task of staying true to yourself, and to the people who made you who you are."[103] Entertainment Weekly called it the best nonfiction book of the year, and Time named Fun Home the best book of 2006, describing it as "the unlikeliest literary success of 2006" and "a masterpiece about two people who live in the same house but different worlds, and their mysterious debts to each other."[104][105]

Fun Home was a finalist for the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award, in the memoir/autobiography category.[106][107] In 2007, Fun Home won the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Comic Book, the Stonewall Book Award for non-fiction, the Publishing Triangle-Judy Grahn Nonfiction Award, and the Lambda Literary Award in the "Lesbian Memoir and Biography" category.[108][109][110][111] Fun Home was nominated for the 2007 Eisner Awards in two categories, Best Reality-Based Work and Best Graphic Album, and Bechdel was nominated as Best Writer/Artist.[112] Fun Home won the Eisner for Best Reality-Based Work.[10] In 2008, Entertainment Weekly placed Fun Home at No. 68 in its list of "New Classics" (defined as "the 100 best books from 1983 to 2008").[113] The Guardian included Fun Home in its series "1000 novels everyone must read", noting its "beautifully rendered" details.[114]

In 2009, Fun Home was listed as one of the best books of the previous decade by The Times of London, Entertainment Weekly and Salon.com, and as one of the best comic books of the decade by The Onion's A.V. Club.[9][115]

In 2010, the Los Angeles Times literary blog "Jacket Copy" named Fun Home as one of "20 classic works of gay literature".[116] In 2019, the graphic novel was ranked 33rd on The Guardian's list of the 100 best books of the 21st century.[117] In 2024, The New York Times ranked it #35 of the 100 best books of the 21st century.[118]

Challenges and attempted banning

[edit]

2006: Marshall, Missouri

[edit]

In October 2006, a resident of Marshall, Missouri, attempted to have Fun Home and Craig Thompson's Blankets, both graphic novels, removed from the city's public library.[119] Supporters of the books' removal characterized them as "pornography" and expressed concern that they would be read by children.[14][120] Marshall Public Library Director Amy Crump defended the books as having been well-reviewed in "reputable, professional book review journals", and characterized the removal attempt as a step towards "the slippery slope of censorship".[119][120] On October 11, 2006, the library's board appointed a committee to create a materials selection policy, and removed Fun Home and Blankets from circulation until the new policy was approved.[121][122] The committee "decided not to assign a prejudicial label or segregate [the books] by a prejudicial system", and presented a materials selection policy to the board.[123][124] On March 14, 2007, the Marshall Public Library Board of Trustees voted to return both Fun Home and Blankets to the library's shelves.[15] Bechdel described the attempted banning as "a great honor", and described the incident as "part of the whole evolution of the graphic-novel form."[125]

2008: University of Utah

[edit]

In 2008, an instructor at the University of Utah placed Fun Home on the syllabus of a mid-level English course, "Critical Introduction to English Literary Forms".[126] One student objected to the assignment, and was given an alternate reading in accordance with the university's religious accommodation policy.[126] The student subsequently contacted a local organization called "No More Pornography", which started an online petition calling for the book to be removed from the syllabus.[16] Vincent Pecora, the chair of the university's English department, defended Fun Home and the instructor.[16] The university said that it had no plans to remove the book.[16]

2013: Palmetto Family

[edit]

In 2013, Palmetto Family Council, a conservative South Carolina group affiliated with Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council, challenged the inclusion of Fun Home as a reading selection for incoming freshmen at the College of Charleston.[17][127][128] Palmetto Family president Oran Smith called the book "pornographic".[127] Bechdel disputed this, saying that pornography is designed to cause sexual arousal, which is not the purpose of her book.[17] The controversy made its way to the Senate and House of Representatives. In the Senate they were voting on whether or not to make budget cuts to the summer reading program for incoming freshmen. Senator Brad Hutto used a four-hour filibuster to delay the voting process and felt that this was "a challenge to academic freedom and an act that would shame our state."[129] There was an alternative for students who find that the selection of reading chosen by their institution is offensive: they are offered a College Reads! as the alternative. The past president of College of Charleston, Glenn McConnell, had contradicting opinions on Fun Home. When asked about the reading he stated that professors have academic freedom when it comes to what they teach in the classroom, but they should also ask themselves if it is worth it and "it certainly wouldn't be my book of choice."[129] The punishment given to the college was a cut to funding to prevent the institution from exploring identity and sexuality. Many tried to fight this because it was seen as a restriction and became a "battlefield in a full-blown culture war."[130]

College provost George Hynd and associate provost Lynne Ford defended the choice of Fun Home, pointing out that its themes of identity are especially appropriate for college freshmen.[17] However, seven months later, the Republican-led South Carolina House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee cut the college's funding by $52,000, the cost of the summer reading program, to punish the college for selecting Fun Home.[131][132] Rep. Garry Smith, who proposed the cuts, said that in choosing Fun Home the university was "promoting the gay and lesbian lifestyle".[132][133] Rep. Stephen Goldfinch, another supporter of the cuts, said, "This book trampled on freedom of conservatives. ... Teaching with this book, and the pictures, goes too far."[134] Bechdel called the funding cut "sad and absurd" and pointed out that Fun Home "is after all about the toll that this sort of small-mindedness takes on people's lives."[135] The full state House of Representatives subsequently voted to retain the cuts.[136] College of Charleston students and faculty reacted with dismay and protests to the proposed cuts, and the college's Student Government Association unanimously passed a resolution urging that the funding be restored.[137][138][139] A coalition of ten free-speech organizations wrote a letter to the South Carolina Senate Finance Committee, urging them to restore the funds and warning them that "[p]enalising state educational institutions financially simply because members of the legislature disapprove of specific elements of the educational program is educationally unsound and constitutionally suspect".[138][140][141] The letter was co-signed by the National Coalition Against Censorship, the ACLU of South Carolina, the American Association of University Professors, the Modern Language Association, the Association of College and Research Libraries, the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, the Association of American Publishers, the National Council of Teachers of English and the American Library Association.[141][142] After a nearly week-long debate in which Fun Home and Bechdel were compared to slavery, Charles Manson and Adolf Hitler, the state Senate voted to restore the funding, but redirect the funds towards study of the United States Constitution and The Federalist Papers; the university was also required to provide alternate books to students who object to an assignment due to a "religious, moral or cultural belief".[143][144][145] Governor Nikki Haley approved the budget measure penalizing the university.[146]

2015: Duke University

[edit]

In 2015, the book was assigned as summer reading for the incoming class of 2019 at Duke University. Several students objected to the book on moral and/or religious grounds.[147]

2018: Somerset County, New Jersey

[edit]

In 2018, parents challenged Fun Home in the Watchung Hills Regional High School curriculum. The challenge was rejected, and the book remained in the school. One year later, a lawsuit was filed in May 2019 against the administrators of the school asking for removal of the book. The lawsuit claims that if the book is not removed, "minors will suffer irreparable harm and that New Jersey statutes will be violated."[148] After the Watchung Hills High School challenge, administrators at nearby North Hunterdon High School removed Fun Home from their libraries as well, but the book was later restored in February 2019.[149]

2022: Wentzville, Missouri

[edit]

In January 2022, the Wentzille school board in Missouri voted 4–3 to ban Fun Home, going against the review committee's 8–1 vote to retain the book in the district's libraries.[150] The ban included three other books, as well: George M. Johnson's All Boys Aren't Blue, Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, and Kiese Laymon's Heavy.[150]

2022: Rapid City, South Dakota

[edit]

In May 2022, parents challenged Fun Home in the Rapid City Area Schools, claiming the book is "pornographic" and the overall picture of having books similar to Fun Home in schools is a "Marxist Revolution." Some teachers disagreed because the book represents the highly marginalized voices of the LGBTQ+ community. The school board decided to temporarily remove the book.[151]

2023: Sheboygan, Wisconsin

[edit]

In January 2023, Sheboygan South High School principal, Kevin Formolo, removed Fun Home from the school's library after community members expressed outrage about the book's inclusion. Supporters of the principal's decision say the sexual content of the book is inappropriate in a school setting. Others equated the removal of the book from the school's library to discrimination.

Two other books were also removed from the library by the principal, Alison Bechdel's Are You My Mother? and Maia Kobabe's Gender Queer.[152]

2025: Alberta, Canada

[edit]
See also: Book censorship in Canada § Alberta Public Schools

In July 2025, the conservative provincial government of Alberta, led by Premier Danielle Smith, issued an order to school libraries restricting books with "explicit sexual content".[153] Alberta’s Education and Childcare Minister Demetrios Nicolaides did not provide a list of books to be removed, but provided four examples of sexually explicit content: Fun Home by Bechdel, Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe; Blankets by Craig Thompson; and Flamer by Mike Curato. Notably, all four examples of objectionable materials are graphic novels depicting coming-of-age and LGBTQ subjects.[154]

In August of 2025, the Edmonton Public School Board's internally distributed a list of over 200 books to be removed from library shelves in order to comply with the new policy.[155] The list included literary classics including The Handmaid's Tale, Brave New World, and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. When the list was leaked to the public, major backlash[156][157][158] ensued forcing the government to pause implementation[159] .

In September 2025, the government announced a revised policy that requires removal of only visual representations deemed sexually explicit.[160] The examples of objectionable materials continue to include Bechdel's Fun Home.

Adaptations

[edit]

Stage musical

[edit]
Main article: Fun Home (musical)

Fun Home has been adapted into a stage musical, with a book by Lisa Kron and music by Jeanine Tesori. The musical was developed through a 2009 workshop at the Ojai Playwrights Conference and workshopped in 2012 at the Sundance Theatre Lab and The Public Theater's Public Lab.[161][162][163] Bechdel did not participate in the musical's creation. She expected her story to seem artificial and distant on stage, but she came to feel that the musical had the opposite effect, bringing the "emotional heart" of the story closer than even her book did.[164]

The musical debuted Off-Broadway at The Public Theater on September 30, 2013.[18] The production was directed by Sam Gold and starred Michael Cerveris and Judy Kuhn as Bruce and Helen Bechdel. The role of Alison was played by three actors: Beth Malone played the adult Alison, reviewing and narrating her life, Alexandra Socha played "Medium Alison" as a student at Oberlin, discovering her sexuality, and Sydney Lucas played Small Alison, at age 10. It received largely positive reviews,[165][166][167] and its limited run was extended several times until January 12, 2014.[19] The musical was a finalist for the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Drama; it also won the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Musical, the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Musical, and the Obie Award for Musical Theater.[21][22][23][24] Alison Bechdel drew a one-page comic about the musical adaptation for the newspaper Seven Days.[168]

A Broadway production opened at Circle in the Square Theatre in April 2015. The production won five 2015 Tony Awards, including Best Musical,[169] and ran for 26 previews and 582 regular performances until September 10, 2016, with a national tour that began in October 2016.[170] Kalle Oskari Mattila, in The Atlantic, argued that the musical's marketing campaign "obfuscates rather than clarifies" the queer narrative of the original novel.[171]

Potential musical film

[edit]

In January 2020, Jake Gyllenhaal and a partner secured the rights to produce a film version of the musical, planning to star Gyllenhaal as Bruce Bechdel with Sam Gold directing and Amazon MGM Studios distributing.[172] In 2023, according to Alison Bechdel, she will not have direct involvement on the project and Gyllenhaal was no longer involved in any upcoming film adaptation. She did, however, say "They're still trying to make this movie happen, but it will have a different star."[173] However, on April 2, 2024, Gyllenhaal was confirmed to remain involved on the film as a producer when he and his Nine Stories Productions banner signed a first-look deal with Amazon MGM.[174]

See also

[edit]

References

[edit]
[edit]
Revisions and contributorsEdit on WikipediaRead on Wikipedia

Fun Home

View on Grokipedia
from Grokipedia
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic is a graphic written and illustrated by American , first published in 2006 by Houghton Mifflin. The work recounts Bechdel's childhood in Beech Creek, Pennsylvania, and her evolving understanding of her father 's closeted , juxtaposed with her own as a shortly before his apparent in 1980. Bechdel, an and director of the family-owned —nicknamed the "Fun Home" by his children—led a double life marked by secretive affairs and aesthetic obsessions. The interweaves nonlinear narratives drawn from Bechdel's diaries, letters, and literary allusions, exploring themes of dysfunction, repressed sexuality, and self-discovery through dense, referential illustrations. It achieved commercial success as a New York Times bestseller and garnered literary praise for its innovative form and emotional depth, leading to translations in multiple languages. In 2013, Fun Home was adapted into a Broadway musical by and , which premiered in 2015 and won five , including Best Musical. Despite its acclaim, Fun Home has faced significant , particularly in educational contexts, where it has been challenged, removed from curricula, or proposed for defunding due to objections over its explicit illustrations of sexual acts and themes of , with critics labeling it as inappropriate or pornographic for students. Such challenges highlight ongoing debates about the suitability of autobiographical works addressing non-normative sexualities in public institutions.

Background and Creation

Author and Family Context

Alison Bechdel was born on September 10, 1960, in , to Bruce Allen Bechdel and Helen Augusta (née Fontana) Bechdel. The family lived in the small town of Beech Creek, approximately ten miles away, where they managed the local , which Bechdel and her siblings nicknamed the "Fun Home." Bechdel has two younger brothers, Christian and John. Her upbringing in this environment, marked by the constant presence of death and the family's restorations, forms the backdrop for her graphic Fun Home. Bruce Bechdel (1936–1980) worked as a high school and part-time , continuing the third-generation . He was an avid reader, collector, and president of the Clinton County Historical Society, with interests in and aesthetics that influenced his daughter's artistic development. However, Bruce maintained a homosexual life, engaging in affairs with men, including teenagers, while enforcing strict discipline at home, which strained family relations. Helen Bechdel (1933–2013) taught high school English and had aspired to a career in , having met Bruce during a college production of . She tolerated her husband's for decades, prioritizing family stability and her children's upbringing over personal fulfillment. On July 2, 1980, Bruce was fatally struck by a near the family home; while officially ruled an , Bechdel interprets it as , citing his recent dismissal from teaching, lack of a note, and timing shortly after her as a .

Development Process

Alison Bechdel commenced work on Fun Home in the late 1990s, devoting approximately seven years to its creation while concurrently producing her syndicated Dykes to Watch Out For every two weeks, which extended the timeline due to divided attention. The project marked a departure from her episodic strip format toward a unified graphic , requiring her to forge a cohesive from fragmented personal recollections without an initial outline or endpoint in mind. The writing process unfolded as an exploratory endeavor, beginning with textual accounts of pivotal memories that Bechdel excavated through , aided by ongoing to probe psychological depths and family dynamics. She drew upon materials including childhood diaries and family photographs, which provided raw visual and textual anchors to sequence non-linear events and highlight contrasts, such as shifts in her mother's demeanor across decades. Midway through, Bechdel crafted an illustrated synopsis to pitch the unfinished work to publishers, securing a with Houghton Mifflin and subsequent guidance to refine the structure into chapters. Drawing and design integrated seamlessly with writing, involving meticulous manual labor over each page—adjusting panels to harmonize images, , captions, and allusions in a novel graphic syntax akin to , where text and visuals iteratively shaped one another. Bechdel entered a trance-like state during this phase, balancing obsessive precision with to render intimate revelations, though she later described exposing her family's secrets—particularly to her reticent mother—as profoundly distressing. This labor-intensive method, devoid of digital shortcuts, underscored the memoir's physicality and pushed the boundaries of as a medium for literary .

Initial Publication Details

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic was first published in hardcover on June 8, 2006, by Houghton Mifflin Company in and New York. The first edition featured 232 pages of black-and-white illustrations and text, with ISBN-10 0618477942. A paperback edition followed on June 5, 2007, from Mariner Books, an imprint of .

Content Overview

Plot Synopsis

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic is a graphic memoir by Alison Bechdel that chronicles her childhood in Beech Creek, Pennsylvania, and her intricate relationship with her father, Bruce Bechdel, who directed the family's funeral home, locally known as the "Fun Home." The narrative unfolds non-linearly across seven chapters, drawing parallels between Bechdel's emerging lesbian identity and her father's concealed homosexuality, framed through literary allusions such as Homer's Odyssey and Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time. The story begins with a childhood of Bechdel, at age three, tumbling into her father's arms during play, evoking the myth of and to symbolize their inverted dynamic—Bruce as the controlling craftsman imposing aesthetic order on their Victorian home and family life, while suppressing his desires. Bruce, a high English teacher and , maintained a facade of propriety, enforcing strict rules on his three children—Alison and her brothers John and Christian—despite his own clandestine affairs with young men, including family acquaintances and students. In 1980, shortly after Bechdel comes out as to her parents while a at , Bruce dies in a truck accident on a rural highway, which Bechdel interprets as probable amid his lifelong internal conflict. This event prompts Bechdel's mother, Helen, to reveal Bruce's history of homosexuality, infidelity, and a 1960s court case involving charges from an encounter with a teenage handyman. Bechdel reflects on intercepted letters and diaries exposing her father's double life, contrasting his emotional unavailability with fleeting moments of connection, such as shared literary discussions. Bechdel's college years interlace with flashbacks, detailing her first with classmate Joan and her obsessive cataloging of gay icons in to affirm her identity, mirroring Bruce's escapist reading habits. The memoir culminates in Bechdel grappling with inherited traits—repressed desires, perfectionism, and a penchant for fabrication—while mourning her father, whose death she views as a release he denied himself through denial and performance.

Core Themes

Fun Home centers on the complex father-daughter relationship between and her father, Bruce, highlighting parallels in their sexual orientations—his repressed and her emerging identity—as a lens for exploring inherited queerness and emotional distance within the . Bechdel depicts her father's life as a source of domestic tension, where his aesthetic obsessions and infidelities masked inner turmoil, contrasting with her own path toward openness after in college. This dynamic underscores themes of repression versus authenticity, as Bruce's inability to live openly contributed to a performative facade, including the dual role of the family-run symbolizing death and concealment. A pivotal theme is the interpretation of Bruce's 1980 suicide, shortly after Alison's coming-out letter, which Bechdel scrutinizes for possible causal links to guilt, liberation from secrecy, or longstanding depression tied to his orientation in a conservative era. The probes and , with Bechdel using nonlinear reflection to unresolved loss, questioning whether her disclosure prompted his death or merely coincided with it, while drawing on psychoanalytic concepts to unpack familial inheritance of trauma. Emotional and dysfunction emerge through vignettes of Bruce's strictness and mother's complicity, revealing how parental secrets fostered Alison's hyper-vigilance and self-analysis. Gender roles and identity formation constitute another core thread, as Bechdel contrasts her butch presentation and rejection of femininity with her father's dandyish masculinity, illustrating how both navigated societal expectations around sexuality and performance. The narrative critiques artifice in self-presentation, from Bruce's curated home restorations to Alison's diary rituals, emphasizing truth-seeking amid deception. Self-discovery intertwines with these, as Alison reconstructs her past to affirm her lesbian identity, free from her father's constraints, though haunted by his unfulfilled potential.

Literary and Cultural Allusions

Fun Home employs a dense array of literary allusions to parallel the Bechdel family's dynamics with canonical works, particularly framing Bechdel's and through the lens of modernist literature and . Bechdel explicitly uses references to authors like , , and not merely as ornament but to elucidate psychological and biographical parallels, as she notes these serve to "illustrate" her narrative points rather than purely as shorthand. This underscores the memoir's exploration of how fiction shapes personal truth, with Bruce's obsessions—evident in his teaching Alison about Fitzgerald and Joyce—mirroring his repressed desires. Greek mythology features prominently, with Bechdel invoking the Daedalus myth five times in the opening pages to depict her father as a labyrinthine creator akin to the engineer who built the 's maze, trapping himself in secrecy. She casts Bruce as and herself as , inverting the son's fatal flight to suggest her own "escape" into identity contrasts his entrapment, while also alluding to the as a symbol of monstrous paternal impulses. These classical references ground the memoir's Oedipal tensions in archetypal father-son (or father-daughter) conflicts, drawing from Joyce's Ulysses and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which Bruce assigns Alison, linking his life to Stephen Dedalus's quest for autonomy amid paternal dominance. Proust's recurs as a motif of and sexual awakening, with Bruce beginning the novel the year before his 1980 death, prompting Bechdel to draw parallels between Proust's madeleine epiphany and her own retrospective insights into his affairs. Fitzgerald's works, especially , evoke Bruce's ill-fated pursuits, as Bechdel notes biographical overlaps like Fitzgerald's age at death matching her father's (44 years), and uses Gatsby's illusory grandeur to analogize Bruce's funeral-home facade hiding homosexual liaisons with boys and men. Additional allusions to highlight themes of and scandal, reinforcing Bruce's identification with literary figures whose lives ended in disgrace, while Camus and appear to probe existential isolation and unreliable narration. Cultural allusions extend beyond literature to mid-20th-century American artifacts, such as 1950s advertisements and Army manuals that Bruce collects, symbolizing his era's repressive heteronormativity, though these serve more as visual foils than direct intertexts. Bechdel's method avoids reductive equivalence, instead layering allusions to reveal the contingency of memory—facts verifiable through her diaries and letters—against fictional archetypes, critiquing how her father's literary enthusiasms both connected and alienated them. This approach, while innovative, relies on reader familiarity, potentially limiting accessibility but enriching analysis for those versed in the canon.

Artistic Style and Structure


Fun Home employs a non-linear narrative structure, interweaving Bechdel's reflections on her father's death and closeted homosexuality with flashbacks to her childhood and parallel developments in her own lesbian identity during college. This approach uses scene-to-scene transitions in panel sequences to juxtapose disparate time periods, revealing connections between events separated by years. Aspect-to-aspect layouts further slow the pace, emphasizing mood and multiple perspectives on grief or secrecy, such as in sequences depicting funerals or hidden desires. The memoir's seven chapters are framed by literary allusions, drawing parallels between Bechdel's family dynamics and works like James Joyce's Ulysses or Marcel Proust's , which structure thematic explorations of inheritance, deception, and self-discovery. Visual and textual quotations from literature, film stills (e.g., from ), and family documents create a collage-like density, blending autobiography with intertextual critique to underscore the unreliability of and the constructed nature of truth. Bechdel's artistic style features clean, cartoonish line work for narrative panels, evoking subjective recollection, contrasted with meticulous cross-hatching and shading for rendered photographs and realistic elements, which mimic archival objectivity. Family photos are redrawn in photorealistic detail across double pages or as chapter headers, using dense textures to differentiate "" from interpretive , as in depictions of childhood snapshots or evidentiary letters. This dual approach, rooted in traditional and watercolor techniques with visible imperfections, invites readers into an over-the-shoulder viewpoint, mirroring Bechdel's analytical gaze on her past.

Critical Analysis

Narrative Techniques and Reliability

Fun Home utilizes a nonlinear, recursive that eschews chronological progression in favor of revisiting pivotal events from the author's childhood and her father's life, enabling layered interpretations of trauma, sexuality, and . This approach, characterized by episodic returns to motifs like the family home and specific childhood incidents, builds thematic depth through repetition and variation, mirroring the fragmented nature of memory reconstruction. The graphic memoir's form integrates visual and verbal elements to heighten complexity, with detailed illustrations—often photorealistic—contrasting interpretive captions that impose adult hindsight on youthful scenes. Images may depict literal events while text overlays psychological analysis or literary parallels, creating tension between objective depiction and subjective framing; for instance, recreated photographs and documents serve as evidentiary anchors yet invite speculative readings. Bechdel incorporates extensive literary allusions, drawing from works such as Oscar Wilde's and Marcel Proust's , to analogize her father's existence and her own awakening, thereby embedding personal history within broader cultural narratives. This functions as a narrative device to externalize internal conflicts, though it risks conflating with fictional archetypes. Regarding reliability, Fun Home foregrounds the inherent subjectivity of by interrogating memory's fallibility; Bechdel, as narrating adult, explicitly doubts the objectivity of her recollections, noting, “How did I know that the things I was writing were absolutely, objectively true? All I could speak for was my own perceptions, and perhaps not even those.” She bolsters factual claims with primary sources like family correspondence and diaries, which verify details such as her father's affairs and death circumstances, yet prioritizes "emotional truth" over verbatim accuracy, acknowledging reconstructive imagination in scenes like the speculated . This self-reflexivity manifests in metafictional elements, such as anachronistic insertions and mythic overlays (e.g., the allegory), which blur factual reporting and , challenging readers to discern verifiable events from interpretive liberties. While the autobiographical pact—where author, narrator, and align—fosters initial trust through visual specificity, the text's emphasis on perceptual limits and fictional resonances underscores memoirs' constructed rather than documentary precision. The nonlinear design amplifies this by generating dramatic irony, where retrospective knowledge reveals gaps in contemporaneous understanding, thus modeling from incomplete evidence.

Psychological and Familial Interpretations

Scholars applying psychoanalytic frameworks to Fun Home interpret the narrative as Bechdel's attempt to process her father's death through , contrasting it with the that characterized his life due to repressed homosexual desires. Freud's distinction between —detaching from a lost object via conscious recollection—and —pathological incorporation of the lost object amid unresolved —is central, with Bechdel using visual reenactments, diaries, and family photos to facilitate detachment from Bechdel, who died in 1980 at age 44, shortly after she came out as . This process transforms personal grief into a broader commentary on cultural prohibitions against non-heteronormative identities, enabling Bechdel to avow her sexuality where her father could not. Familial interpretations emphasize the inter-generational transmission of trauma and from Bruce's existence, which permeated the household and influenced Bechdel's psychological development, including her obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) manifesting in childhood rituals like symbolic journal entries from ages 10 to 14. The , restored in a Gothic style by Bruce, symbolizes concealed queerness and , embedding tension that Bechdel internalized as self-loathing and isolation, mirroring her parents' coping through art and perfectionism. Bruce's eventual support for Bechdel's in 1980 acts as a partial "catch," interrupting 's by affirming her authenticity, though his probable underscores unresolved paternal rooted in pre-Stonewall-era stigma. The father-daughter relationship is analyzed as a site of mirrored inversion, where enforced feminine norms on Bechdel to suppress her tomboyish traits, yet both shared subversive expressions amid familial dysfunction marked by emotional and parental detachment. This dynamic, interpreted through Freudian lenses of disallowed desires, highlights how Bruce's shame—stemming from societal expectations rather than innate —fostered a home environment of compulsive concealment, contributing to Bechdel's adult reflections on inherited psychological burdens. Such readings, while speculative in their psychoanalytic assumptions, underscore the graphic memoir's role in graphic healing, where Bechdel's nonlinear structure and visual allusions facilitate retrospective integration of familial trauma.

Strengths and Literary Merits

Fun Home demonstrates exceptional literary merit through its innovative non-linear narrative structure, which recursively revisits key events to unpack layers of , trauma, and self-discovery, reflecting the nonlinear of psychological processing. This approach, blending chronological disruptions with thematic echoes, allows Bechdel to juxtapose her coming-of-age experiences against her father's hidden life, creating a palimpsest-like depth that traditional memoirs often lack. The work's artistic strengths lie in Bechdel's meticulous draftsmanship, characterized by precise, almost archival illustrations that reconstruct domestic scenes with photographic , enhancing the memoir's claim to authenticity while underscoring the constructed nature of recollection. Panels often employ visual metaphors and intertextual references—such as allusions to Ulysses or —integrated seamlessly into the composition, enriching thematic exploration of identity, sexuality, and inheritance without overt exposition. This fusion of visual and verbal elements elevates the graphic form, demonstrating how can achieve literary sophistication comparable to high modernist novels. Critics highlight the memoir's intellectual rigor in employing a dense network of literary allusions as , which not only frames personal history within broader cultural contexts but also critiques performative aspects of and orientation through ironic distancing. Such techniques contribute to its recognition as a pioneering achievement in graphic , evidenced by awards including the 2007 Eisner Award for Best Reality-Based Work and the , affirming its impact on legitimizing the genre as serious literature. The result is a text that privileges empirical over , offering readers a model of unflinching into familial and individual agency.

Criticisms and Limitations

Some reviewers have criticized Fun Home for its heavy reliance on literary allusions and intertextual references, which can come across as pretentious and inaccessible to readers lacking familiarity with canonical works like those of or . This stylistic choice, while integral to Bechdel's analytical approach, prioritizes intellectual layering over emotional immediacy, making the narrative feel detached or elitist to some. The memoir's nonlinear structure and introspective density further limit its appeal, demanding significant reader effort to parse fragmented timelines and thematic echoes, which may frustrate those expecting a more conventional autobiographical flow. Bechdel's emphasis on psychoanalytic self-examination over linear exacerbates this, potentially rendering the work more suited to academic audiences than general ones. A more substantive ethical critique centers on Bechdel's portrayal of her father Bruce's sexual involvement with underage males, including high school students and a 13-year-old in the 1970s, which involved statutory violations under law at the time ( 16 until 1995). Rather than unequivocally denouncing these acts as predatory, Bechdel draws parallels to her own experiences and contextualizes them amid her father's life and possible in 1980, leading some to argue she softens or relativizes the abuse's gravity. This approach has been faulted for prioritizing familial over victim perspectives or clarity, raising questions about memoiristic responsibility in depicting exploitation. The depiction of other family members, notably Bechdel's mother, remains comparatively underdeveloped, serving more as a peripheral figure in the father-daughter dynamic than a fully realized character, which constrains the memoir's scope as a comprehensive tragicomic. Overall, while Fun Home excels in formal , these elements highlight limitations in , ethical framing, and narrative balance that temper its universal acclaim.

Reception and Impact

Critical Reviews

Fun Home received widespread critical acclaim upon its June 2006 publication, with reviewers praising its innovative blend of graphic storytelling and literary depth in examining familial secrecy and sexual identity. The New York Times lauded it as an "engrossing memoir" that "does the graphic novel format proud," highlighting its "painfully honest and richly detailed" depiction of Bechdel's strained bond with her closeted father. This assessment underscored the work's success in elevating personal narrative through visual and textual precision, distinguishing it from typical comics. The New Yorker emphasized its pioneering status as the first graphic memoir to become a finalist for the in 2006, commending its "lucid comic anguish" that merged raw personal trauma with dispassionate analysis and literary references to works like Proust and Joyce. However, the publication also reported familial disputes over its factual reliability; Bechdel's brother John contested the portrayal of a uniformly miserable childhood, describing his own memories as more idyllic, while another brother planned a counter-memoir. Such accounts raise questions about selective recall in autobiographical works, where emotional interpretation may overshadow verifiable events. The Guardian review portrayed Fun Home as a poignant exploration of grief, sexuality, and inheritance, blending wit and melancholy to achieve universal resonance in family dysfunction, ultimately deeming it both comforting and startling through motifs like the Daedalus-Icarus myth. Critics in these mainstream outlets, often aligned with progressive cultural institutions, consistently celebrated its intellectual ambition, though this acclaim may reflect broader tendencies to favor narratives affirming non-traditional identities over rigorous scrutiny of evidentiary claims. Some readers and informal critiques have faulted its dense intertextuality—drawing on canonical literature—as overly ambitious or alienating, potentially prioritizing erudition over accessibility.

Awards and Recognition

Fun Home won the 2007 Eisner Award for Best Reality-Based Work, recognizing its excellence in comics based on real events. It was also nominated in the Best Graphic Album category and was nominated for Best Writer/Artist at the same awards. The memoir was a finalist for the 2006 in Autobiography. It received the 2007 from the American Library Association's Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Round Table for its portrayal of LGBTQ experiences. Fun Home was a double finalist for the 2007 in the categories of LGBT Nonfiction and Bisexual/Transgender categories. In 2006, Time magazine named it the #1 Book of the Year. In July 2024, The New York Times included Fun Home in its list of the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century. The work also earned a GLAAD Media Award for its contributions to LGBTQ visibility.

Sales and Cultural Influence

Fun Home achieved notable commercial success after its 2006 publication by Houghton Mifflin, appearing on the New York Times list for two weeks. By 2012, the book had sold between 40,000 and 45,000 copies, according to author . Sales surged in subsequent years, with 52,403 units sold in 2015 alone, coinciding with the Broadway premiere of its musical adaptation. The Tony Award-winning musical, which opened in 2013 off-Broadway and transferred to Broadway in 2015, amplified the memoir's reach, transforming it from a niche into a broader cultural phenomenon through cross-media exposure. The book's cultural influence lies in its role in legitimizing graphic memoirs as serious literary forms, particularly those addressing queer identity, familial dysfunction, and inherited trauma without . It paved the way for mainstream crossover of autobiographical , demonstrating how visual-verbal interplay could convey psychological depth comparable to traditional memoirs. Bechdel's meticulous integration of literary allusions and archival imagery influenced subsequent works in the genre, emphasizing authenticity over narrative simplification. rankings affirm its enduring impact, with inclusions on lists of top 21st-century books by (2024) and (2019).

Educational and Cultural Controversies

Arguments Against Inclusion in Schools

Critics of including Fun Home in school curricula and libraries argue that the graphic contains sexually explicit illustrations unsuitable for minors, including depictions of a masturbating and women engaging in . These visual elements, combined with textual discussions of the author's sexual encounters and her father's alleged relationships with underage males, raise concerns about exposing students to pornographic material in an educational setting. Parents and school board members have cited such content as grounds for removal, asserting it exceeds age-appropriate boundaries even in high schools, potentially violating community standards for public education. Additional objections focus on the book's treatment of heavy themes like , , obsessive-compulsive disorder, and implied incestuous dynamics between Bechdel and her father, which challengers claim could psychologically burden young readers without adequate contextual support. In multiple districts, including North Hunterdon-Voorhees Regional High School District in , Fun Home was challenged alongside other titles with LGBTQ+ themes, with opponents arguing it promotes sexual ideologies over literary value and bypasses al consent in taxpayer-funded institutions. For instance, in , a highlighted the explicit images as too for access, leading to a narrow board vote to retain the book despite review committee input. Similarly, reevaluations in Osseo, , stemmed from complaints about its graphic nature, underscoring tensions between artistic merit and safeguarding development from mature, potentially desensitizing content. Proponents of exclusion further contend that Fun Home's unfiltered portrayal of , exploration, and familial dysfunction prioritizes ideological messaging over neutral , risking in impressionable environments. Challenges in states like , , and reflect broader patterns where school officials removed or restricted the book post-parental objections, prioritizing empirical assessments of harm—such as confusion or premature sexualization—over abstract defenses of free expression. These arguments emphasize causal links between graphic exposure and developmental impacts, drawing on parental testimonies rather than institutional endorsements often influenced by progressive biases in educational bodies.

Arguments For Retention and Access

Advocates for retaining Fun Home in educational settings highlight its pedagogical merits in dissecting intricate relationships, repressed identities, and the interplay between personal history and literary allusions. The memoir's nonlinear structure and graphic format enable students to analyze themes of self-discovery and intergenerational trauma, prompting critical engagement with questions of human existence and ethical living, which resonate with adolescents navigating . Educators have noted its utility in fostering classroom debates on universal experiences like parental expectations and sexual awakening, transcending specific orientations to appeal broadly to readers from varied backgrounds. Legal and institutional arguments stress that exclusion contravenes and constitutional safeguards. The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund contends that content-based removals, as in the 2014 South Carolina legislative push to withhold $52,000 in funding from the for assigning the book, erode faculty autonomy in curating materials and infringe on First Amendment rights against viewpoint discrimination. Such interventions, they argue, disadvantage students by limiting exposure to challenging texts, akin to including works like Adolf Hitler's to confront difficult ideas without endorsement. Professional review committees, following established policies, have repeatedly endorsed retention, as in the North Hunterdon-Voorhees Regional High case where administrators overrode recommendations despite a two-year review incorporating student input for diversity. Retention also supports student well-being by contributing to affirming educational climates. Research indicates that inclusive curricula featuring LGBTQ perspectives correlate with lower rates and higher grade-point averages among sexual minority youth, as affirmed spaces mitigate isolation and bolster resilience. The National Coalition Against Censorship has defended Fun Home's place in expanded reading lists to reflect diverse identities, countering marginalization reported by students and aligning with evidence that such representation enhances overall outcomes without necessitating universal endorsement.

Notable Challenge Cases

In Wentzville R-IV School District in , the school board voted on May 17, 2022, to remove Fun Home from district libraries following parental complaints about depictions of sexual activity and themes of , , and family dysfunction. The decision was part of a broader pattern of removals, prompting the ACLU of to file a on February 14, 2022, alleging viewpoint under the First , as the board targeted books with LGBTQ+ content while retaining others with similar explicitness. The suit, C.K.–W. v. Wentzville R-IV School District, sought reinstatement, arguing that removals were ideologically motivated rather than based on age-appropriateness for all students. In the North Hunterdon-Voorhees Regional High School District in , administrators restricted access to Fun Home in August 2024 at two high schools after parental objections to illustrations of nudity and sexual themes, moving copies to restricted sections requiring permission. The National Coalition Against Censorship criticized the move as unnecessary , noting the book's literary acclaim and prior unchallenged presence in libraries. This followed a review process but bypassed full committee input, highlighting tensions over parental rights versus educational access. At Brookfield High School in , parents challenged Fun Home for the third time since 2021, citing explicit content including references to and in the context of the author's family history; on February 27, 2024, the board voted 5-4 to retain it in the library by a single margin. Advocates for retention emphasized its value as a on identity and , while challengers argued it promoted inappropriate material for minors. Other instances include a 2023 removal from high school libraries in despite a review committee's recommendation to keep it, based on concerns over . These cases reflect recurring objections to Fun Home's graphic depictions of adult sexuality and experiences, often framed by challengers as protecting minors from , though defenders cite its award-winning status and contextual literary merit.

Adaptations and Extensions

Stage Musical Productions

The stage musical adaptation of Fun Home, with music by Jeanine Tesori, book and lyrics by Lisa Kron, and direction by Sam Gold, premiered Off-Broadway at The Public Theater's Newman Theater in on October 22, 2013, after previews beginning September 30, 2013. The production starred as Bruce Bechdel, with as adult Alison and as small Alison, earning acclaim for its innovative non-linear structure and emotional depth drawn from Bechdel's graphic memoir. Following its Off-Broadway success, the musical transferred to Broadway at the Circle in the Square Theatre, where it began previews on March 27, 2015, and officially opened on April 19, 2015. The Broadway run continued until September 10, 2016, completing 555 regular performances and 27 previews, totaling 582 shows, and marked the first time an entirely female creative team (Tesori and Kron) won the . Cerveris reprised his role as , earning a Tony for Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical, while the production secured five overall, including for Best Book of a Musical, Best Original Score, Best Direction of a Musical, and Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Musical for . A U.S. national tour launched on October 2, 2016, and concluded on December 3, 2017, bringing the production to audiences across multiple cities under the supervision of the original creative team. The tour retained core elements of Gold's staging, emphasizing the memoir's themes of family dysfunction, , and posthumous reckoning with a parent's hidden life. Internationally, the musical debuted in the at the in on June 18, 2018, again directed by , with a cast featuring Kaisa Hammarlund as Alison and as Bruce; the production ran until August 25, 2018, and received positive reviews for its intimate thrust-stage adaptation suited to the venue. Licensed through Concord Theatricals, Fun Home has since seen numerous regional and international mountings, including in at Center Theatre Group from February 21 to April 1, 2017, and various U.S. venues, reflecting its broad appeal for professional and educational theaters despite thematic sensitivities around sexuality and family trauma.

Proposed Film Adaptation

In January 2020, actor and producer acquired the rights to develop a of the Tony Award-winning musical Fun Home, based on Alison Bechdel's 2006 graphic memoir, with plans for him to star as the protagonist's father, Bruce Bechdel. The project was envisioned as a movie musical, directed by , who had helmed the original Broadway production in 2015. Initial reports indicated production could begin toward the end of 2020 under Gyllenhaal's Nine Stories banner. As of 2023, the remained in the development phase, with story selection and rights secured but no underway. In April 2024, Nine Stories entered a three-year with , explicitly confirming that the Fun Home film was still active among Gyllenhaal's projects, with Amazon handling distribution. No additional , screenplay details, or release timeline have been publicly disclosed, though the project was listed among ongoing adaptations as recently as August 2025.

References

  1. https://graphicartistsguild.org/fun-home-a-family-tragicomic/
  2. https://www.harperacademic.com/book/9780547347004/fun-home/
  3. https://citylights.com/graphic-novels-comix/fun-home-a-family-tragicomic/
  4. https://www.vox.com/2015/8/26/9211327/duke-fun-home
  5. https://cbldf.org/banned-challenged-comics/case-study-fun-home/
  6. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alison-Bechdel
  7. https://www.timteeman.com/2012/05/12/alison-bechdel/
  8. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/04/23/drawn-from-life
  9. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/14773553/bruce_allen-bechdel
  10. https://www.shortform.com/blog/bruce-bechdel/
  11. https://www.shortform.com/blog/helen-bechdel/
  12. https://yasminnair.com/alison-bechdels-fun-home-a-family-tragicomic-4-july-2007/
  13. https://www.tcj.com/the-alison-bechdel-interview/
  14. https://walkerart.org/magazine/alison-bechdel-the-interview/
  15. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/02/alison-bechdel-explains-process-behind-graphic-memoirs-in-harvard-talk/
  16. https://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/1220
  17. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/nov/05/alison-bechdel-interview-cartoonist-fun-home
  18. https://www.amazon.com/Fun-Home-Tragicomic-Alison-Bechdel/dp/0618477942
  19. https://bannedbooks.library.cmu.edu/alison-bechdel-fun-home-a-family-tragicomic/
  20. https://www.burnsiderarebooks.com/pages/books/140947899/alison-bechdel/fun-home-a-family-tragicomic
  21. https://www.goodreads.com/work/editions/911368-fun-home-a-family-tragicomic
  22. https://www.litcharts.com/lit/fun-home/summary
  23. https://www.supersummary.com/fun-home-a-family-tragicomic/summary/
  24. https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/fun-home/summary-and-analysis/
  25. https://www.litcharts.com/lit/fun-home/chapter-1-old-father-old-artificer
  26. https://www.gradesaver.com/fun-home/study-guide/summary
  27. https://www.shortform.com/summary/fun-home-summary-alison-bechdel
  28. https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/166/oa_edited_volume/chapter/3453504
  29. https://imagetextjournal.com/mourning-and-melancholia-in-alison-bechdels-fun-home-a-family-tragicomic/
  30. https://repository.belmont.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1155&context=burs
  31. https://www.shortform.com/blog/fun-home-themes/
  32. https://www.fishtanklearning.org/curriculum/ela/12th-grade/fun-home/
  33. https://libjournals.unca.edu/ncur/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/2514-McDougall-Danielle-FINALm.pdf
  34. https://lithub.com/how-alison-bechdel-understands-her-life-as-fiction/
  35. https://melaniesjournal.wordpress.com/2013/06/12/the-literary-references-in-fun-home/
  36. https://scarletreview.camden.rutgers.edu/archive/2018edition/funhome.html
  37. https://www.litcharts.com/lit/fun-home/themes/fiction-and-reality
  38. https://funhomeblogs.blogspot.com/2019/11/notable-literary-references-in-fun-home.html
  39. https://www.centertheatregroup.org/news-and-blogs/news/2017/march/the-fun-home-reading-list/
  40. https://thesymzonian.wordpress.com/2013/01/23/modernism-and-alison-bechdels-fun-home/
  41. https://funhomeproject.wordpress.com/2018/03/29/influences-on-bechdels-work/
  42. https://knowledge.lancashire.ac.uk/id/eprint/33119/1/Accepted%2520manuscript.pdf
  43. https://otherwomenswords.wordpress.com/2014/03/18/the-importance-of-literature-in-fun-home/
  44. https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1908&context=hc_sas_etds
  45. https://imagetextjournal.com/collage-technique-in-alison-bechdels-fun-home-a-family-tragicomic/
  46. https://www.salon.com/2006/06/05/bechdel/
  47. https://dickonedwards.substack.com/p/free-edition-alison-bechdel-drawing
  48. https://funhomeproject.wordpress.com/2018/03/31/structure/
  49. https://dougslangandlit.blog/2022/09/30/non-fiction-study-fun-home-by-alison-bechdel/
  50. https://urj.uccs.edu/index.php/urj/article/view/279/172
  51. https://www.uni-erfurt.de/fileadmin/fakultaet/philosophische/Literaturwissenschaft/Amerikanistische_Literaturwissenschaft/Resources/Essay_Prize_Winner/EssayPrize_2018_WinningPaper.pdf
  52. https://imagetextjournal.com/spectral-memory-sexuality-and-inversion-an-arthrological-study-of-alison-bechdels-fun-home-a-family-tragicomic/
  53. https://gradesfixer.com/free-essay-examples/suspension-of-the-imaginary-in-the-real-fiction-as-truth-in-the-memoir/
  54. https://www.gradesaver.com/fun-home/study-guide/irony
  55. https://etd.ohiolink.edu/acprod/odb_etd/ws/send_file/send?accession=bgsu1530891026381072&disposition=inline
  56. https://watercolorstain.wordpress.com/2023/03/07/alison-bechdel-fun-home/
  57. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/254218271_Under_Construction_Alison_Bechdel%27s_Fun_Home_A_Family_Tragicomic
  58. https://imagetextjournal.com/its-sad-but-not-crazy-memory-as-construction-performance-in-graphic-memoirs/
  59. https://sjgn.uofsccreate.org/graphic-novels/fun-home/
  60. https://www.ala.org/winner/fun-home-family-tragi-comic
  61. https://theillustratedpage.wordpress.com/2016/05/08/review-of-fun-home-by-alison-bechdel/
  62. https://amanjareads.com/fun-home-graphic-novel-review/
  63. https://courses.lsa.umich.edu/english-344-001/2020/03/31/read-it-out-fun-home-alison-bechdels-decidedly-not-pretentious-study-of-fatherhood/
  64. https://funfandomblog.wordpress.com/2025/06/23/fun-home-graphic-novel-review/
  65. https://www.cbr.com/why-such-love-for-alison-bechdels-fun-home-an-examination-of-a-critically-lauded-piece-of-comics-literature/
  66. https://brettmilam.com/2022/10/04/book-review-fun-home-a-family-tragicomic/
  67. https://springsonstage.com/2018/04/03/review-fun-home/
  68. https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/16bfd4m/i_have_some_residual_feelings_about_fun_home_by/
  69. https://jasperproject.org/jasper-magazine-online/dwjsdmyny7lcac5gwxxayyewbg5aln
  70. https://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/26/books/26gust.html
  71. https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2013/dec/28/comfort-reading-alison-bechdel-fun-home
  72. https://goodokbad.com/reviews/fun_home_review.php
  73. https://www.mcnallyrobinson.com/9780618871711/alison-bechdel/fun-home
  74. https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/392869/fun-home-by-bechdel-alison/9781529116168
  75. https://entertainment.time.com/2012/04/26/top-10-graphic-memoirs/slide/fun-home/
  76. https://www.bookcritics.org/past-awards/2006/
  77. https://chipublib.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S980C1044107
  78. https://www.amazon.com/Fun-Home-Tragicomic-Alison-Bechdel/dp/0618871713
  79. https://www.facebook.com/publictheater/posts/alison-bechdels-novel-fun-home-has-been-named-one-of-the-new-york-times-top-100-/915406303962375/
  80. http://c-ville.com/live-arts-fun-home-tugs-heart/
  81. https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/69286-inside-2015-s-category-bestsellers.html
  82. https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/04/branding-queerness-the-curious-case-of-fun-home/479532/
  83. https://www.thepopverse.com/comics-alison-bechdel-comics-books-comic-book-influence-explained
  84. https://www.picturethispost.com/fun-home-banned-book-review/
  85. https://www.newstimes.com/news/article/brookfield-school-board-votes-challenged-book-18692227.php
  86. https://www.marshall.edu/library/bannedbooks/fun-home-a-family-tragicomic/
  87. https://ccxmedia.org/news/osseo-school-board-keeps-controversial-book-in-3-3-vote/
  88. https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2015/08/28/essay-experience-teaching-fun-home-and-why-graphic-novel-ideal-college-students
  89. https://ncac.org/news/fun-home-under-fire-in-new-jersey
  90. https://publications.csba.org/california-school-news/june-2023/schools-can-be-affirming-safe-places-for-lgbtq-youth-amid-book-ban-disputes/
  91. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09638237.2023.2245894
  92. https://www.ksdk.com/article/news/education/parents-weigh-in-wentzville-book-ban/63-2b5f6ebb-4b8d-4e18-abc1-d90323fbcaf3
  93. https://www.aclu-mo.org/en/news/aclu-missouri-sues-wentzville-school-district-stop-banning-books
  94. https://www.aclu.org/cases/ck-w-v-wentzville-r-iv-school-district-0
  95. https://ncac.org/news/new-jersey-high-schools-restrict-access-to-fun-home
  96. https://ncac.org/news/blog/fun-home-under-fire-in-new-jersey
  97. https://www.slj.com/story/School-Boards-Tied-Up-By-Book-Bans-face-harassment-Struggle-Address-Other-Issues
  98. https://pen.org/alison-bechdels-fun-home/
  99. https://playbill.com/article/a-look-back-at-fun-home-off-broadway
  100. https://www.concordtheatricals.com/p/58581/fun-home
  101. https://www.ibdb.com/broadway-production/fun-home-497807
  102. https://broadwaydirect.com/it-all-comes-back-remembering-fun-home-on-broadway-10-years-later/
  103. https://www.playhousesquare.org/assets/doc/FUNHOMETalkingPoints-8aa26fefcf.pdf
  104. https://playbill.com/article/fun-home-where-are-they-now
  105. https://www.ibdb.com/tour-production/fun-home-501161
  106. https://www.broadwayworld.com/shows/backstage.php?showid=331625
  107. https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-44574896
  108. https://www.centertheatregroup.org/about/production-history/2017/fun-home/
  109. https://www.broadwayworld.com/article/Jake-Gyllenhaal-To-Produce-And-Star-In-FUN-HOME-Film-Adaptation-Sam-Gold-To-Direct-20200102
  110. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/jake-gyllenhaal-movies-amaozon-mgm-1235864460/
  111. https://theplaylist.net/jake-gyllenhaal-fun-home-20200103/
  112. https://www.movieinsider.com/m21655/fun-home
  113. https://deadline.com/2024/04/jake-gyllenhaal-amazon-mgm-road-house-1235873931/
  114. https://www.whatsonstage.com/news/ten-musical-movies-currently-in-the-works_1690655/
Add your contribution
Related Hubs
User Avatar
No comments yet.