Alison Bechdel's Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, is a double narrative, both autobiography and biography, the story of Alison and the story of Bruce. Father and daughter are continually compared and contrasted: each other’s opposites (“I was butch to his nelly”) they are also united in their non-heteronormative identities. Their search for “self” takes wildly and tragically different trajectories: Bruce repressing his sexuality in a series of furtive, clandestine and dangerous affairs, Alison slowly learning to expressing hers more openly. Yet their two lives also overlap in particular ways: both negotiate their sexuality through literature, both are artists whose creativity is linked, in healthy and unhealthy ways, to their sexuality, and Bruce’s mysterious death coincides with Alison’s coming out.
Write an essay discussing the father/daughter relation of Alison and Bruce. Why is her autobiography dominated by his story? What does she need to negotiate with his memory? Why is her life symbolically premised on his death? How would you characterize the ending, an ending which returns us to the book’s beginning?
You can organize your discussion any way you choose. You do not need to worry about formally referencing anything you discuss; no Works Cited page necessary. This is a more informal discussion of how you see things. You can talk about any of the ideas or texts we've previously discussed or that you've written about, but you are not required to make any formal citations. I do, however, ask that your discussion include some comment on the book's narrative structure and the relationship between text and image.
Length: around 4 typewritten double-spaced pages.
All papers must be stapled or they will not be accepted.
Due: Wednesday, April 22
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