Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic had been on my to read for a bit as one of the more visible challenged and banned books since its publication in 2006 (31st most challenged in the decade 2010-2019 according to the ALA) that I hadn’t gotten to yet, but moved higher up as it was challenged locally to me twice since 2020 (it’s been retained both times). So, it found its way to my September reading as my personal choice for Banned Books Week 2024.
As is the case with many of the banned and challenged books I’ve chosen to read over the past decade this is a book about coming of age as a queer person. Alison Bechdel shares her journey to understanding that she is a lesbian and her early foray into romantic and sexual relationships in college. Fun Home, though, is subtitled A Family Tragicomic, because Bechdel is really telling us the story of her father, and her relationship to him, his queerness, and his possible suicide at age 44. Bechdel layers into this story the discussion of gender roles, dysfunctional family dynamics, life in a small town, fixations, and mental health which create a far deeper retelling of her life and her father’s, all while leaning heavily on their shared love of literature to unpack the resonances in their lives.
In the 2024 Bingo description for the Golden square something stood out to me as I was trying to decide which square Fun Home would be, having realized belatedly that I hadn’t previously decided. Initially I was planning on just looking at which titles I felt I might not get to and replace one, but then I read: is it something truly precious, or a facade? Aha, that’s one thesis of this book (Bechdel has more than one). Bechdel’s father’s preoccupation with restoring their family home and creating a de facto historic house museum that they lived in was a point of pride for him and contention for everyone else. It is reflected again in the funeral home their family runs, in her parents’ professions as English teachers, her mother’s acting work, her own diary keeping as a child, and her move towards graphic non-fiction writing. Bechdel picks at it all, was it precious, was it a facade, was it both?
Bingo Square: Golden.
