Thematic Similarities in Fun Home by Alison Bechdel and The Bread Givers by Anzia Yezierska

   One of the common themes in both The Joy Luck Club and The Kitchen God's Wife is strong women. All the women in both generations in each book gain strength through different experiences. These experiences range from a war-ravaged China to the modern day stresses of womanhood. Though different experiences have shaped each woman, they are all tied together by the common thread of strength.

Sara Smolinsky is the youngest of four sisters; the eldest is Bessie, whom everyone calls the “Burden-bearer” because the whole family lives on her pay check. “I knew the landlord came that morning hollering for rent. And the whole family were hanging on Bessie’s neck for her wages. Unless she got work soon, we’d be thrown in the street to shame and to laughter for the whole world.”(1) The second eldest

Many families were broken apart during the civil war, where the father had to leave his spouse and children behind; forcing them to take care of themselves in his absence. In the novel Little Women, Marmee is the ideal representative of a motherly role model in a transcendentalist family during the eighteen hundreds. She continually guided her daughters to find joy in the most menial tasks. She stood strong in the presence of her daughters, although she had to raise them alone in the absence of their father, who has left to volunteer as a Chaplin during the Civil War. Her girls made it clear how they aspired to be as good hearted as she was. A mother’s hard work is seen through her children’s actions.

We are all living in a society that is filled with social expectations of gender. From our early age, we seem to be able to response to these expectations accordingly. For example, we notice Barbies are for girls while robots and cars are for boys only. In the “Performative Gender”, “Doing Gender”, and “Nerd Box”, authors all indicate gender is learned instead of inherited. They bring out their insightful observation and critical personal experience to illustrate how the social expectations with punitive effects construct our gender unconsciously. These articles provide a great lens for us to understand the mental state and behaviors of the main characters in Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic. In Fun Home, Alison Bechdel portrays how living in Beech Creek, Pennsylvania during the 1930s not only repressed both her father, Bruce, and her from coming out as a homosexual and genderqueer, but also trapped her mother, Helen, in her “women box”. Through the graphic memoir, Fun Home is able to present the struggling process that one may need to go through before admitting one’s unusual gender identity and sexual orientation.

At the beginning of this same line, the girl tells what she does not like, "It seemed to me that work in the house was endless, dreary and peculiarly depressing."  She sees her mother's life and the work that she does and simply does not want to be a part of it.  She also outright says, "I hated the hot dark kitchen in summer; the green blinds and the flypapers, the same old oil table and wavy mirror and bumpy linoleum" (113).  The girl is showing her opposition to her assigned gender role.  She does not like working in the house or preparing comparing and contrasting of the father's world versus the mother's world.  The father's world is composed of outdoor work, fox farming, has no emotion, expresses freedom and identified by light.  The father's world is all about the death of animals.  So, there is no time for emotions.  This lack of emotions is also carried into the relationship between the girl and her father.  The girl says, My father did not talk to me unless it was about the job we were doing.  Whatever thoughts and stories my father had were private, and I was shy of him and would never ask him questions" (112).  The girl accepted this and considered it part of the attitude you have to have for this job.  The girl prefers her father's type of emotion rather than her mother's.  The girl describes her mother's emotions:

In the early twentieth century, Fania, Bessie, and Masha, the older children of the Smolinski family are unable to find work to support their hungry, weak family.The youngest daughter in the Smolinski family is named Sara and will go outside and make some money by selling herring when Mrs. Molinski loses hope for the family 's financial situation:"I was about ten years old then. But from always it was heavy on my heart the worries for the house as if I was mother. I knew that the landlord came that morning hollering for the rent," (P.1). Reb Smolinsky is the girls’ father. Reb is also out of work and as a poor Jewish man, spends his days reading holy books and living off of what little money his own children make. Eventually the older daughters will find work. Mrs. Smolinski is then able to rent a second room. The family is very excited when Bessie announces that she and a man named Berel Berenstein had fallen in love. Bessie invites him to dinner at her home. Reb finds out about his daughter’s relationship with Berel and even that Berel was willing to marry her. Despite the joy and enthusiasm expressed by the rest of the family, doesn’t decide to congratulate her, but rather that because of the family’s financial situation, Berel must also pay the full cost of the wedding. Reb also demands that Berel set him up a business. After that, Berel becomes infuriated and leaves. After reading this I couldn’t help but wonder, one

Now, Sarah feels that her personal pursuit relies on getting herself embedded in the American culture through getting herself educated. This dream, however, is to face the negligence of her family, leaving her strong will to be the only tool in need to fight with the ancient molding of cultural dilemma which taught to treat women like they were the dolls in the house and are to be treated whatever the man’s in house wished to treat them as. If one raids out the whole book to find the very cause of her family being negligence will find the need for her family’s food and warmth as equal as the societal expectation

     In Anzia Yezierska’s novel entitled Bread Givers, there is an apparent conflict between Reb Smolinsky, a devout Orthodox rabbi of the Old World, and his daughter Sara who yearns to associate and belong to the New World. Throughout the story, one learns about the hardships of living in poverty, the unjust treatment of women, and the growth of a very strong willed and determined young woman—Sara Smolinsky.

“The Semplica-Girl Diaries” is a short story in which George Saunders, the author, presents unique ideas of the way people live their life and what each person does to be able to live. The dad, Saunders’ main character, writes in a diary and explains to the readers what he experiences almost every day with his family. He wants to be there for his family and provide for them the best that he can, but it is difficult when he has young children who have desires as any children do. The dad mentions status throughout the short story, and the children are aware that they do not have money like some other people who are around them. Not everyone in the world has the best job and life, because it is not always up to people to make the choices that need to be made for their family.

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.

The ties her family had to one another had kept the family greatly restrained, Sarah saw this at an early age and decided to do more with her life. Her parents were Jewish immigrants, and while her father Reb Smolinsky devoted his life to his god, the women of the house were forced to keep the family afloat. After Reb receives money from his three daughters forced marriages he buys

From slavery to the issues of gender and race, the idea of abuse has been displayed through of love and other Demons. The story of a young girl named Sierva being disconnected from the comforts of wealth due to the wrong diagnosis and ignorance is a very interesting scene in the novel. Sierva was raised by the slaves after she was abandoned by her own family especially her father who "He always believed he loved his daughter, but the fear of rabies obliged the Marquis to admit to himself that this was a lie for the sake of convenience." (Grossman)

The girl distrusts her mother and believes her to be out of touch, while helping her father in "his real work" (468). Surprisingly, the girl's desire to avoid the manifestation of her femininity in womanly tasks, such as cooking and cleaning, influences her into feeling that her mother is "plotting now to get [her] to stay in the house [. . ]. and keep [her] from working for [her] father" (469). The girl chooses to dismiss her mother, thereby dismissing her own future role as a housewife.

The second character in the story  is the girl who has only two lines so it is sort of hard to explain what type of character she exactly is however this two lines prospects us a few aspects like into the relationship between mother and daughter she does not have lot of power. Even though she tries to do well behave but she has to protest against her mom when she  call her slut “but I don’t sing benna on Sundays at all and never in Sunday school” she appears to be protecting herself.  Although the daughter listens to her mother’s word for word but she is not scared to protest or to talk with bitterness towards her mother because she feels that she has right to make her own decision whether or not to be domesticated. Whereas the girl doesn't

But Anna was sent to the only primary school in the village. In a Syrian Christian family, a man’s wealth and position depended on the education and achievements of his sons rather than those of his daughters. Often mothers too accept this social reality. Mathen’s desire to make her a barrister is ridiculed by his wife Saramma. Her response indicates the attitudes and expectations of a mother-in-law in a traditional society. She says, “In a few years time, she will become a part of some other family and her mother-in-law is sure to give her a good spanking if she behaves like a barrister there” (BTRPIS 39). According to her, it is better for a girl to stay at home and learn cooking before being married off to a new family. She also shared the traditional view that girls ought to be married off as early as possible. Mathen, like his wife Saramma, begins to feel the necessity of training his daughter in managing the house which alone would help her when she sets foot in an alien household. She is brought up in tune with the gender expectations of the