She also discusses her own discovery of her sexuality and her first relationship in college.Ĭhapter 4, “In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower,” focuses on Alison and her father as inversions of one another. She goes into detail about how her parents met and the circumstances of their marriage. This chapter also includes the first depiction of Alison coming out to her parents as a lesbian. Thus, this chapter introduces books and literature as a reoccurring motif.Ĭhapter 3, “That Old Catastrophe,” focuses on Alison’s mother, Helen Augusta.

Both of the Bechdel parents were highly literate English teachers. She also recalls struggling with emotional detachment. Bechdel recalls a childhood spent around corpses and death paraphernalia. It also introduces him as a closeted gay man and his proclivity to sleep with teenage boys.Ĭhapter 2, “A Happy Death,” is concerned largely with Bruce’s death and his part-time career as a funeral director. This chapter focuses heavily on Bruce’s obsessive interest in historical restoration. This book also contains strong language, including anti-queer slurs and pejoratives.Ĭhapter 1, “Old Father, Old Artificer,” opens on young Alison and her father playing “airplane.” This chapter introduces the parallelism between Alison and her father and Icarus and Daedalus of Greek myth. Fun Home is also the focus of numerous banning attempts due to its sexual themes and imagery.Ĭontent Warning: this book includes descriptions and images of sex, masturbation, abuse, death, death by suicide, anti-queer bias, and familial dysfunction. Both runs received numerous awards, including five Tonys. In 2013, Fun Home was adapted into an Off-Broadway stage musical that later debuted on Broadway in 2015. It also garnered numerous awards, including the GLAAD Media Award, the Stonewall Book Award, the Publishing Triangle-Judy Grahn Nonfiction Award, the Lambda Literary Award, and an Eisner Award for Best Reality-Based Work. Entertainment Weekly named it the best nonfiction book of 2006, and Time Magazine named it the best book of 2006. The New York Times, The Times, New York Magazine, and Publishers Weekly all named it the best comic book of 2006. Fun Home is a highly decorated publication.

Fun home bechdel