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Fun Home Discussion Guide: Home
Articles, Interviews, and Reviews
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The Things They BuriedThe New York Times Book Review, June 18, 2006.
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Fun HomeSalon.com, June 5, 2006.
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Listen: Interview with Alison BechdelNPR Books, September 19, 2014.
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CR Holiday Interview #1 -- Alison BechdelThe Comics Reporter, December 18, 2012.
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Freshmen skipping Fun Home for moral reasonsDuke Chronicle, August 21, 2015.
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I’m a Duke freshman. Here’s why I refused to read Fun Home.Washington Post, August 25, 2015.
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No, Duke Freshman, Fun Home Is Not PornographicSlate.com, August 26, 2015.
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Additional Interviews and FeaturesFrom dykestowatchoutfor.com, accessed November 27, 2015.
Other Works by Alison Bechdel
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Are You My Mother? by
ISBN: 9780618982509 -
The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For by
ISBN: 9780618968800
Videos
Discussion Questions
(From the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund)
- How did Bechdel's relationship with her father change as she became an adult and a self-identified lesbian?
- Bechdel relied heavily on first hand sources such as letters, journals, and photographs to document her upbringing. One example of this is the series of photos on page 120. How do these media contribute to the authenticity of the book and influence her art?
- Fun Home's narrative in non-linear and moves fluidly between the past and the present, revisiting central incidents over and over again. In what ways does this structure impact the story?
- Dream sequences are frequently found in artistic expression. How does Bechdel's analysis and interpretation of her dreams and her emphasis on imagery enhance her storytelling?
- One of the reasons that Fun Home has been challenged is LGBTQ themes. In what ways is this public discomfort with sexual identity similar to the discomfort of the characters in the memoir? How does it differ?
- How does Bechdel's use of a limited color palette influence the story? Does it enhance or distract from the story? Explain your reasoning.
- Appearances are important to the Bechdel family, even though they do not often reflect reality. What are some examples from the story in which appearance and reality did not match, and how do these examples illustrate the tensions among the members of the Bechdel family?
- Bechdel has obsessive-compulsive tendencies, which began with a particularly intense onset at age 10. How did her obsessive-compulsive disorder contribute to the documentation of her childhood?
- Bechdel and her father connect over literature, and literary reference are integral to Fun Home. Identify some of these references. How did Bechdel’s various literary allusions impact her storytelling?
- On page 125, Bechdel imagines how things would differ if her family told the truth. Is Bechdel telling the truth in her own memoir? Explain your reasoning?
- Bechdel painstakingly drew Fun Home by hand, often reproducing actual photographs and journal entries. How do you think her reliance on drawing everything by hand versus using computer techniques impacts the narrative?
- Showing, which relays the action so the reader is experiencing it with the characters, and telling, which uses a narrator to fill in the reader about aspects of the story, are two tools by which creators relay action in their books. Bechdel uses both showing and telling in Fun Home. How might the story have differed if she used one and not the other? Is one method more honest than the other? Explain your reasoning.
Reserve a copy
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Fun Home by
ISBN: 9780618477944
Suggestions for further reading
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The Undertaker's Daughter by
ISBN: 9781476757285What if the place you called "home" happened to be a funeral home? Kate Mayfield explores what it meant to be the daughter of a small-town undertaker in this fascinating memoir evocative of Six Feet Under and The Help, with a hint of Mary Roach's Stiff. -
Likewise by
ISBN: 9781416552376Ariel Schrag concludes her turbulent ride through high school in the long-awaited final volume of her acclaimed series of compelling and strikingly honest autobiographical graphic novels. Set in Berkeley, California, Likewise takes us into the holy grail of teenagers, every bit as terrifying as it is liberating: senior year. Struggling with a major longing for her ex-girlfriend who has gone away to college, her parents' post-divorce relationship, anxiety over the future, and all the graphic details of her complicated life, Ariel sets out to document everything and everyone. -
Stitches by
ISBN: 9780393068573One day David Small awoke from a supposedly harmless operation to discover that he had been transformed into a virtual mute. A vocal cord removed, his throat slashed and stitched together like a bloody boot, the fourteen-year-old boy had not been told that he had throat cancer and was expected to die. Small, a prize-winning children's author, re-creates a life story that might have been imagined by Kafka. -
H Is for Hawk by
ISBN: 9780802123411When Helen Macdonald's father died suddenly on a London street, she was devastated. An experienced falconerHelen had been captivated by hawks since childhoodshe'd never before been tempted to train one of the most vicious predators, the goshawk. But in her grief, she saw that the goshawk's fierce and feral temperament mirrored her own. Resolving to purchase and raise the deadly creature as a means to cope with her loss, she adopted Mabel, and turned to the guidance of The Once and Future King author T.H. White's chronicle The Goshawk to begin her challenging endeavor. -
Blankets by
ISBN: 9781891830433Wrapped in the landscape of a blustery Wisconsin winter, Blankets explores the sibling rivalry of two brothers growing up in the isolated country, and the budding romance of two coming-of-age lovers. A tale of security and discovery, of playfulness and tragedy, of a fall from grace and the origins of faith.