The Dramatic Twist Of This Graphic Memoir By Alison Bechdel

She looked at herself as a woman and preferred to be with straight men and often got discriminated against for this. She states, “My father hated the way I was…his whole side hated the way I was,” (Berendt 105). She talks about how horrified they were when she arrived at her father’s funeral in a dress and a boy on her arm. She also discusses the difficulties she faced dating black men. Once they discovered her “T” they were often disgusted, one even held a gun to her head. This was her reasoning behind only dating straight white men, because they were often accepting. Because homosexuality was viewed as wrong and they were often harshly discriminated against, not many of them made it known.

“It's a wonder I haven't abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.” (Anne Frank) Anne Frank was one of the many children who fell victim to the Holocaust during the World War II. Anne’s story is nothing short of a tragedy; she died at the early age of fifteen from Typhus while being held by the Nazi Regime, in the concentration camp Bergen-Belsen. Before dying, Anne and her family went into hiding and lived secretly in her father's office building in the Netherlands. While living in the “Annex,” a secret hiding place, she developed many interests such as reading and writing. Anne is famous because she is one of the best-known victims of the Holocaust, her story has been shared with millions in a publication of her diary, and through her writing’s she introduces many people to the massacre and its horror.

It is no secret that when Alison Bechdel was a child, homosexuality was not exactly met with open arms. Due to the unpleasant views many heterosexuals had in regards to homosexuality, Alison Bechdel was at first quite cautious when it came to being open about her newfound sexual orientation; however, she eventually opened herself up to her family, friends, and the world about who she is and did not let the political prejudices of others stop her. This is evident when Bechdel writes, “It was in that tremulous state that I determined to tell my parents. Keeping it from them had started to seem ludicrous anyway” (76). Here, Bechdel decides to come out to her parents, deciding that it was absurd not to tell them. Evidently, the prejudices of society could not keep Alison Bechdel down, and this resulted in her personality being shaped by the courage of being oneself, which is hardly an easy thing to

Everyone has experienced a dark moment in their lives. It is in these dark moments that turn out to be the most profound. In the story “Our Secret” by Susan Griffin, it talks about the connection of the past lives of those in Nazi Germany and about Griffin’s own family. Griffin has also talked about an artist named Kathe Kollwitz. Kathe Kollwitz has created many self portraits relating and expressing the emotions of the people of Nazi Germany. During this time, many people have gone through hardships such as poverty and war. Through poverty some may have experience or gone through some emotional situations. During war, people may have lost someone close to them or even the peace they had before the chaos have occurred. Griffin has related a painting by Kollwitz with her personal life. In the story, Griffin is trying to portray through this connection how people feel emotionally and physically in the midst of war and violence.

On the surface, Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home seems simply to be a memoir of her journey towards discovering her own identity, and in the process, uncovering her father’s. However, the novel is far more complex. The graphic novel is not linear in the least, and mimics memory as it moves backwards and forwards in time, or returns to specific situations repeatedly. This is layered with the numerous references to previous literary texts in an interesting manner; combined, it provides emotional and informative layers to the novel. Bechdel starts to especially question binaries and pushes the boundaries of what it means to be a female and male in a relatively patriarchal society with no middle ground around the rules; as the novel shows, this affects not only Bechdel’s own pursuit towards her identity but has a significant, and ultimately fatal, impact on her father, Bruce.

The way Bechdel decides to depict the characters through her art is a major factor in how the characters are developed, and can be a major factor in how the story is perceived. At a first glance, the depiction of Bechdel’s persona, Alison, in “Are You My Mother?” appears to have very masculine features. An uninformed reader may at first assume that the story is about a man. However, through the dialogue and narration it is quickly revealed that the drawings are depictive of a homosexual woman. Bechdel’s portrayal of herself in the graphics as having very masculine features says a lot about her self-perception. She creates her own persona, so the character seen in the cartoons is Bechdel in her own image and likeness. Clearly, Bechdel illustrated her comic so that the character bared a strong resemblance to her own self-image. Later on in the story, starting on page 83, Alison is depicted wearing glasses and she bears a much stronger resemblance to actual pictures of Bechdel. In several scenes throughout the story, including the opening scene, Bechdel has dreams of herself as a child. These scenes showed a young Alison, dressed in what would widely be considered boys clothing (Bechdel 73). The illustrations as a whole are very sexually ambiguous. This may be perceived as an allusion to Bechdel’s struggles with her own sexuality. However, the refrences to Bechdel’s struggles go beyond the art.

Imagine a memoir with skillfully alternating chapters between two characters that have distinct differences. It 's what sets James McBride 's chronicle from your average, everyday book as this story as he packs a healthy amount of content such as issues of race, religion, and identity into one paperback. Published in February 1998, it maintained the New York Times bestseller list for over 2 Years, won the 1997 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Literary Excellence, was an ALA Notable Book of the Year, and has sold more than 1.5 million copies. It has been published in 16 languages and in more than 20 countries. It is an autobiography that sort of strays away from the common formula, however it still retains the core welcoming feeling you get when you can relate to the characters. McBride recognizes what a wonder his mother is when she raised 12 kids and gets her to open her secretive past.

In the book She’s Come Undone by author Wally Lamb, we travel on a journey with a young girl Dolores Prices, as she matures from early childhood to adulthood and all the terrible things that accompany her along her voyage. It was rather intriguing the Wally Lamb did such an excellent job of writing in a first person perceptive as a woman. He accredits his ability to his older sisters. Wally Lamb wrote this book to help emphasize one’s journey to self-discovery. This book’s theme heavily shows the loss of innocence and a coming of age story. Lamb was able to write in a way that many of us could relate to or may have found ourselves in similar situations. Regardless of Lamb’s purpose for writing this book, he was able to create a relatable

Part graphic memoir and part psychoanalytical study, Alison Bechdel’s, Fun Home, is a charming story about a girl’s search for identity within an unconventional family. The novel style autobiography frames Alison’s childhood and adolescence as she struggles with themes of sexual confusion, gender identity, and convoluted family dynamics. These ideas are explored through the examination of Alison’s relationship with her father, and their shared passion for literature.

Alison Bechdel's graphic memoir, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, documents the author's discovery of her own and her father's homosexuality. The book touches upon many themes, including, but not limited to, the following: sexual orientation, family relationships, and suicide. Unlike most autobiographical works, Bechdel uses the comics graphic medium to tell her story. By close-reading or carefully analyzing pages fourteen through seventeen in Fun Home one can get a better understanding of how a Bechdel employs words and graphic devices to render specific events. One can also see how the specific content of the pages thematically connects to the book as a whole. As we will see, this portion of the book echoes the strained relationship

Alison Bechdel’s memoir, Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama, focuses on Alison and her relationship with her mother. Her relationship with her mother affects the way she relates to people, especially her mother. Bechdel begins this portrayal of Alison’s relationship with her mother on the cover of the book. The red, wood-like background of the cover of the book, is behind all of the other objects. This background is most likely a desk or table of some sort with several objects sitting on top of it. Firstly, I notice the mirror. Mirrors are typically seen as a symbol of self-indulgence and vainness. The mirror is golden and the title of the book, Are You My Mother? is placed in the mirror itself. Secondly, I see the red beaded necklace. The beads are not completely on the book cover. Beads, jewelry, and the color red are often seen as signs of affluence and richness. Next, I see the black and white picture. What appears to be two females are present in the picture. One is older than the other. The woman in the picture looks like she is sitting and appears to be smoking and reading some sort of book, magazine, or newspaper. There is a girl off to the left side of the woman in the picture, clasping her hands, smiling, and watching the woman from a distance. Finally, I notice the lipstick on the cover. The lipstick is in a white container with a gold band. I can clearly see that it is a red shade of lipstick. Again, red lipstick is usually seen worn on someone of importance.

Jasmine Duran’s “Childhood Monsters” changed me even though I already knew their names. These particular “childhood memories” were of the foster children that went through Jasmines house, and the first thing written in her memoir is a Disclaimer that says it may be “difficult to read and stomach.” And it is. Some of these stories seem like they came

When Alison Balsom was quite young when she began to play trumpet. She has pushed herself to become one of the best female trumpeters. Alison has grown from being a little girl playing trumpet to a successful adult winning awards for her great talents. Balsom has even played the ancient trumpet called a buisine.

Fun Home is a retelling of Alison Bechdel’s life through the lens of her relationship with her father. However, because of what she considers to have been his suicide, Alison is left with an incomplete picture of who he was in life. By calling Fun Home an autobiography, Bechdel enters an autobiographical pact with the reader that ensures that what Bechdel is telling us is the truth. However, elements out of her control leave Bechdel unable to provide certain objective facts necessary to her narrative. As an attempt to remedy these absences and in turn maintain the validity of her story, Bechdel uses intertextuality to fill in the gaps of in her retelling. By overlaying masterplots of fictional narratives over her own, the reader is able to get at an understanding of the kind of person Alison’s father was. In this way Bechdel is able to reveal things about her father that she can 't prove to be true, but are reflective enough of his life to become true.

As an introduction, Liudmila Petrushevskaya writes that what readers are about to see is a diary that was sent to her by the daughter of the author of the diary after her mother's death. The notes that make up the diary are those of a woman, a poet, describing her living during the late 1980's, her children and