The Personal IS Political: Alison Bechdel

But personally however, Fun Home, at least for me, results in a far better, as well as a tighter narrative, which engages with the intersection of the personal and the political realms. Subtitled “A Family Tragicomic”, the graphic memoir explores Bechdel’s complex relationship with her father whilst growing up in rural Pennsylvania, and focuses mainly on how her own coming out coincided with the revelation that her father was a closeted homosexual. Thriving with literary allusions and references, this is a work wherein by focusing on the convoluted, dysfunctional ties of her family, Bechdel engages in such themes as fluidity of gender, the conscious shaping of one’s personality, sexual orientation, and even death (not least because the book’s title comes from the family nickname for their funeral home business). There is a wealth of information, but tying it all is the fact that for better or worse, we are products of our upbringing, and that we are indebted to our parents, even when we don’t want to.

Are You My Mother? follows as a sequel to Fun Home, and here Bechdel shifts the focus on to her mother, who was trapped in an unhappy marriage, but could not mitigate its effects, being extremely unaffectionate with her children. In trying to understand her mother’s cold demeanour, Bechdel supplies a lot of psychoanalytic information- having been, in her own words, “in therapy nearly my entire adult life”. There is a lot to digest in here, much more than Fun Home, and this work, her latest, only strengthens her oeuvre with its rich drawings and text.

Reading Bechdel is a must for not only graphic novel and LGBT fiction enthusiasts, but for all those who prefer well-drawn female characters. In a world which thrives on stereotypes, Bechdel’s portfolio comprises, to quote her, “the secret subversive goal… that women… are regular human beings”.