Fun Home is a graphic memoir by cartoonist Alison Bechdel. It follows Alison through the early years of her life as she navigates her relationship with her closeted father, discovers her own sexuality, and grapples with her father’s supposed suicide. Told in a non-linear fashion, the book touches on the themes of gender identity, sexual orientation, dysfunctional households, suicide, and literature as a way of connecting to life.
(Shortform note: because this is a graphic novel, this summary pulls from both the book’s text and illustrations.)
Alison Bechdel grew up in an old, Victorian home in Beech Creek, Pennsylvania with her two brothers, mother, and father. Her father, a notably distant man, put more energy into working on their home than he did focusing on his family. When they first bought the house, it was falling apart, but he was determined to restore it to its former glory. He had an affinity for restoration, and, often, forced his family to help him with his projects.
Alison’s great-grandfather founded the Bechdel Funeral Home. Alison’s father took over the family business after his father had a heart attack. Due to the low population, the funeral home did not make enough to pay the bills, so he took on a second position at the local high school teaching English.
Alison and her brothers dubbed the funeral home the “Fun Home” because they usually had more fun in the funeral home than in their actual home. They played with the chair trolleys, the flower stands, and the smelling salts as they invented worlds of their own. Their grandmother lived in the back and the business was in the front. They would often spend the night at the “Fun Home” and have their grandmother tell them stories about their father’s childhood.
One day, Alison’s father asked her to come to the room where he embalmed the bodies. On the table was a dead, naked man with his chest cut open. She was shocked to see the man’s genitals as well as his internal organs. Her father asked for a pair of scissors that he easily could have grabbed himself. She thinks that this was likely his attempt at eliciting an emotional response to death that he no longer felt.
Later in her life, Alison related to this as she coped with her father’s death. After he died, she would tell people of his passing in a matter-of-fact way to try to elicit an emotional response from them. This was her attempt to emote vicariously through someone else because she wasn’t feeling the sadness or grief that she thought she should be feeling.
Alison began to explore her sexuality in college. She checked out books from the library that discussed homosexuality and focused on the stories of lesbians. Her studies were both informational and erotic. She joined the gay union at her university and began dating her classmate, Joan.
She came out as lesbian in a letter to her family. Alison’s mother didn’t respond well and voiced her disapproval. Soon after, she revealed that her father was having affairs with men. Alison felt as if she had gone from the hero in her own story to the side character in her father’s drama. Though she hoped her coming out would allow her to distance herself from her family because of her unique identity, she was pulled back into their lives because of the realization that she and her father had an unspoken connection that linked the two together.
Alison’s parents almost never showed affection for one another and fighting was the norm in the household. Her father would take his anger out by destroying books and throwing things. Adding fuel to the fire, Alison’s father would bring some of his male students home, give them books, and offer them alcohol. He often focused on these boys more than he focused on his own family. In one instance, he forgot to pick up his own son from Cub Scouts because he was too busy drinking and chatting with a high school student he brought into his library.
Alison’s father was likely a closeted homosexual or bisexual man. Though he never directly expressed his sexuality to his family, Alison recognized a few behaviors that showed her father’s more feminine side throughout her childhood (such as his use of a bronzing stick). She implies that her father’s repression was a source of self-loathing and misplaced anger. She compares her father’s desire to create the image of a perfect home despite its disrepair to his desire to create the image of the perfect man despite his inner struggle.
Her father was sensitive to failure and disorder. He punished his children at any sign of imperfection, even if they hadn’t done anything wrong. For example, he once asked the family why a vase had gotten close to the edge of the table. No one responded, so he proceeded to grab and spank Alison as she cried that she hadn’t done anything.
He was not only sensitive to the perceived failures of his children, but he was also sensitive to his own. For example, one of Alison’s brothers once commented on the peace signs on their father’s tie. It was not a critique, just an observation. Despite the fact that he was running late, Alison’s father immediately ran up to his room and changed ties.
Alison’s father tried to live a double life: one in which he was the perfect family man, and another in which he followed his sexual predilections. He would often take trips without Alison’s mother and bring his children and whatever boy was helping him with housework at the time.
For a while, this boy was Roy. He babysat the kids and helped Alison’s father with a variety of tasks. He accompanied them to the beach one year. After her father’s death, Alison found a photo of Roy taken during this trip by her father. In the photo, Roy is lying in bed wearing only his underwear. At the time, Roy was only 17.
She doesn’t blame her father for his behavior. In fact, she wonders if she would have had the guts to be openly gay in the 1950s, or if she would have done exactly as her father had and made a life for herself pretending to be straight. Though discrimination against homosexuals still existed in the 80s, it was nothing compared to that of the 50s. For example, while she and her lesbian friends were once denied entrance to a bar because of their sexuality, the lesbians of the 50s had to deal with bar raids and cross-dressing rules.
Alison experienced isolation within her own home. Her parents were both artistic. Her father had the house to fix. Her mother played piano and rehearsed for her productions. When she tried to interact with either of them, they would often ignore her to focus on their work. She describes her home as an artist's colony in which each member of the family became consumed by their passion, but in isolation.
In addition to the disorder she felt within her household, Alison also developed an actual disorder at the age of 10. Initially, her obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) involved counting the drips in the bathtub. She couldn’t turn off the faucet until the final drip count was an even number and not a multiple of 13. Soon, her behaviors intensified. She developed rituals for crossing through doorways and had to put on her clothes in a specific order.
During her OCD phase, Alison started a diary. Initially, the entries were bland and straightforward. However, she soon began questioning how she knew that everything she was writing down was objectively true. She began writing the words “I think” in small letters between sentences. She soon developed a symbol to represent the phrase “I think” and began to cover her diary entries with it. The symbols covered up names and pronouns that referred to other people because she couldn’t confirm what they actually saw or thought, and she had to satiate her need to be completely accurate in her diary entries.
Slowly and with the help of her mother, she began to give up her compulsions. She would dictate her diary entries to her mother and developed dates by which she had to stop certain behaviors. Ironically, she was just as obsessive about kicking the habits as she had been with adopting them.
Alison experienced a chaotic summer in 1974 because of events in the country, in her community, and in her personal life. In the United States, the Watergate scandal was coming to a head. In her community, locusts had risen from the ground and infested the town. In her personal life, Alison started puberty and her father got arrested for giving alcohol to an underage boy.
When Alison was 13, she got her first period in June. At first, she didn’t mention it in her diary or tell anyone about this development, not even her mother. She hoped that ignoring it would make it go away. However, when she got her second period, she knew that she had to do something. For a while, she used tissue paper so that she could wait for the right moment to address her development. Though she almost brought it up on a few occasions, Alison didn’t tell her mother that she had gotten her period until around December of that year—almost 6 months after her first one.
Alison’s father had a run-in with the police after an incident with an underage boy. Her father picked up a 17-year old and told him that his brother had gone missing. The boy got in the car and they went looking for his brother. During their search, her father purchased a six-pack of beer and offered the boy a drink. Alison’s father was sent a summons and was charged with giving alcohol to a minor. Though Alison never knew the nature of her father’s relationship with the boys, she later inferred that it was sexual.
While in court, the magistrate focused solely on the alcohol charge and never brought up the nature of Alison’s father’s relationship with the two boys. The judge agreed to dismiss the charges if he agreed to 6 months of counseling. Alison implies that the nature of the sentencing had little to do with the liquor charge and more to do with the unspoken accusation: a homosexual act with a minor.
While on a trip to NYC in 1976, a 15-year old Alison saw the city in a new light. She was traveling with her father and brothers to take part in the bicentennial celebrations. They stayed with a family friend who lived in Greenwich Village, a well-known LGBT community. During her time there, she participated in activities that introduced her to members of the LGBT community and exposed her to LGBT stories.
Years later, Alison moved to New York. She believes that, had her father not died when he did, there was a good chance he’d have died shortly after with the emergence of the AIDS crisis. This is because the LGBT community in New York was the center of the AIDS epidemic in the 80s, and Alison’s father had a tendency to go out at night and sleep with men from that community when he visited the city.
Alison and her father didn’t begin to develop a close relationship until she developed the ability to discuss literature in an intellectual way. When Alison was in high school, she was assigned to her father’s English class. During this time, she discovered that she enjoyed the same types of books that her father did. Their discussions of literature extended beyond the classroom and helped them develop a closer relationship.
When Alison started college, she and her father connected over the books she was assigned in her English classes. However, his excitement for the literature she was reading soon left little room for her to have her own thoughts or opinions. She believed that he was living vicariously through her instead of connecting with her.
While home from school, Alison and her father went to see a movie. On the car ride to the theater, Alison’s father opened up a little about his experiences with men. He said that his first time was when he was fourteen with a man at the Fun Home. He also said that he used to dress up in girl’s clothing, just like Alison used to dress up in boy’s clothing. Though the conversation didn’t delve any deeper, Alison felt as though they had finally discussed the unspoken bond they shared over their sexuality. They never discussed it again.
Alison’s father died after he was hit by a truck while clearing brush from a home he was planning to renovate. The truck driver stated that Alison’s father jumped backward into the road as if he had seen a wild animal. Alison doesn’t know for sure, but she believes that his death was a suicide. She points to the facts that Alison’s mother had just filed for divorce and that her father had been reading literature that implied that life was meaningless.
Though Alison and her mother believed his death was deliberate, Alison mentioned later that perhaps her family chose to believe that because, to them, it was less painful. It gave her father agency over his own death. He chose when he wanted to die and went through with it.
Fun Home is a graphic memoir by cartoonist Alison Bechdel. It follows Alison through the early years of her life as she navigates her relationship with her closeted father, discovers her own sexuality, and grapples with her father’s supposed suicide. Told in a non-linear fashion, the book touches on the themes of gender identity, sexual orientation, dysfunctional households, suicide, and literature as a way of connecting to life.
(Shortform note: The author includes many references to literature. For the sake of clarity, this summary includes brief descriptions of the stories and authors referenced. Also, because this is a graphic novel, the summary pulls from both the book’s text and its illustrations.)
Alison Bechdel grew up in an old, Victorian home in Beech Creek, Pennsylvania with her two brothers, mother, and father. Her father, a notably distant man, put more energy into working on their home than he did focusing on his family. When they first bought the house, it was falling apart, but he was determined to restore it to its former glory. He had an affinity for restoration and, often, forced his family to help him with his projects.
Alison’s father was likely a closeted homosexual or bisexual man. Though he never directly expressed his sexuality to his family, Alison recognized a few behaviors that showed her father’s more feminine side throughout her childhood (such as his use of a bronzing stick). She implies that her father’s repression was a source of self-loathing and misplaced anger. She compares her father’s desire to create the image of a perfect home despite its disrepair to his desire to create the image of the perfect man despite his inner struggle.
Her father was sensitive to failure and disorder. He punished his children at any sign of imperfection, even if they hadn’t done anything wrong. For example, he once asked the family why a vase had gotten so close to the edge of the table. No one responded, so he proceeded to grab and spank Alison as she cried that she hadn’t done anything.
He was not only sensitive to the perceived failures of his children, but he was also sensitive to his own. For example, one of Alison’s brothers once commented on the peace signs on their father’s tie. It was not a critique, just an observation. Despite the fact that he was running late, Alison’s father immediately ran up to his room and changed ties. After this incident, their mother told them that they were no longer allowed to make comments on their father’s appearance, even if their comments weren’t critical.
Though he had his moments of kindness, these actually made the tension in the house worse. The children never knew what version of their father they were going to get, so they had to navigate every interaction with their father with finesse.
Alison and her father were polar opposites of one another. Throughout her childhood, this led to constant tension and disagreement:
Icarus, Daedalus, and the Minotaur
Alison compares her father to three Greek mythological figures: Icarus, Daedalus, and the Minotaur.
Daedalus, a master craftsman and inventor, creates a disguise for Pasiphaë (the wife of King Minos) that allows her to mate with a bull that has been given to King Minos to sacrifice. This results in her giving birth to the Minotaur, a fearsome creature that demands human sacrifice. To contain the Minotaur, King Minos demands that Daedalus construct a Labyrinth to contain the creature. To keep the Minotaur pacified, King Minos sacrifices 7 young men and 7 young women to the beast every year.
When a hero kills the Minotaur, King Minos imprisons Daedalus and his son, Icarus, for Daedalus’s failure. In an effort to escape, Daedalus crafts wings for himself and his child out of wax and feathers. As they fly away, he warns Icarus not to fly too close to the sun because the wax holding his wings together could melt. Icarus doesn’t listen, flies too high, and plummets to his death.
First, Alison compares her father to Icarus. She foreshadows a fall from grace because of his ambition and zeal. This turns out to be his reckless sexual advances toward underaged boys as an outlet to deal with his sexual repression.
Then, she compares her father’s obsession with his work and disregard of human cost to Daedalus’s thoughtlessness. Daedalus didn’t consider the costs of creating the disguise for Pasiphaë. His lack of concern for the consequences of his actions led to the birth of the Minotaur and, by extension, the death of dozens of innocent people. Similarly, Alison’s father’s obsession with the renovation of the house was more important to him than the well-being of his own children. In fact, he would often force them to help him with his work on the house. If they made a mistake or got tired, he would get angry and, sometimes, violent.
Finally, Alison compares her father to the Minotaur and her home to the Labyrinth. Her family had to be careful in their own home because they never knew when their father was just around the corner and ready to go off.
Alison’s great-grandfather founded the Bechdel Funeral Home. Alison’s father took over the family business after his father had a heart attack. Due to the low population, the funeral home did not make enough to pay the bills, so he took on a second position at the local high school teaching English.
Alison and her brothers dubbed the funeral home the “Fun Home” because they usually had more fun in the funeral home than in their actual home. They played with the chair trolleys, the flower stands, and the smelling salts as they invented worlds of their own. Their grandmother lived in the back and the business was in the front. They would often spend the night at the “Fun Home” and have their grandmother tell them stories about their father’s childhood.
One day, Alison’s father asked her to come to the room where he embalmed the bodies. On the table was a dead, naked man with his chest cut open. She was shocked to see the man’s genitals as well as his internal organs. Her father asked for a pair of scissors that he easily could have grabbed himself. He may have done this for a few reasons:
Later in her life, Alison related to the final reason as she coped with her father’s death. After her father’s death, she would tell people of his passing in a matter-of-fact way to try to elicit an emotional response from them. This was her attempt to emote vicariously through someone else because she wasn’t feeling the sadness or grief that she thought she should be feeling.
Alison’s father died after he was hit by a truck while clearing brush from a home he was planning to renovate. The truck driver stated that Alison’s father jumped backward into the road as if he had seen a wild animal. Alison doesn’t know for sure, but she believes that his death was a suicide. She points to the facts that Alison’s mother had just filed for divorce and that her father had been reading literature that implied that life was meaningless.
Though Alison and her mother believed his death was deliberate, Alison mentioned later that perhaps her family chose to believe that because, to them, it was less painful. It gave her father agency over his own death. He chose when he wanted to die and went through with it.
She struggled to comprehend her father’s passing. She spent her childhood watching her father prepare bodies for funerals. When it was time for his, she asked herself, “Who prepares the body of the man who prepares the bodies?” At his funeral, she and her brothers showed little emotion. In fact, the only moments where she felt consolation was in violently brushing off someone’s hand who was trying to support her. This was likely because the action elicited an emotion from her during a time that she was mostly feeling numb.
Albert Camus
Albert Camus was a Nobel prize-winning philosopher, journalist, and author. His work contributed to the development of absurdism: the idea that life is meaningless, but we, as human beings, always inherently search for meaning, thus making life absurd.
Alison’s father had been reading Camus’s A Happy Death right before he died. He had highlighted one particular line that states that people lie to themselves twice about the people they love: once for the other person’s benefit and the second time to their detriment. She relates this line to her father’s sexuality and her parent’s failing relationship. She implies that her mother lied to herself about her father’s sexuality because she didn’t want to believe it. At first, it was for his benefit as she gave him her affection. However, it eventually became the source of her resentment towards him.
Another of Camus’s works that Alison’s father read was The Myth of Sisyphus. In it, Camus examines the idea that life is meaningless, and, therefore, absurd. He uses the story of Sisyphus, a Greek mythological figure, to highlight the pointlessness of life. As a punishment for crimes he committed, the gods forced Sisyphus into the monotonous task of pushing a boulder up a mountain, letting it fall, then starting over again for all eternity. Camus compares this to people working in meaningless or trivial jobs who commit their lives to doing the same monotonous tasks.
Through Camus’s definition, she compares her father to Sisyphus. He stayed in the town in which he was born, worked in tedious jobs that he didn’t love, and kept his true passions hidden away. In the essay, Camus also mentions that the only escape from the absurd is suicide. Though he later retracts that statement and implies that suicide is illogical, Alison believes that her father may have never gotten to that point in the essay.
Alison began to explore her sexuality in college. She checked out books from the library that discussed homosexuality and focused on the stories of lesbians. Her studies were both informational and erotic. She joined the gay union at her university and began dating her classmate, Joan.
She came out as lesbian in a letter to her family. Alison’s mother didn’t respond well. She sent back letters explaining her disapproval and why she thought Alison was making a dangerous choice. Though she said that she could live with Alison’s sexuality, her disappointment was clear, and Alison was shattered by the disapproval.
Soon after coming out, Alison’s mother revealed that her father was having affairs with men. Alison felt as if she had gone from the hero in her own story to the side character in her father’s drama. Though she hoped her coming out would allow her to distance herself from her family because of her unique identity, she was pulled back into their lives because of the realization that she and her father had an unspoken connection that linked them.
Alison’s parents met during a collegiate production of The Taming of the Shrew. Alison compares the problematic plot of Shakespeare’s play to the reality of her parent’s marriage. In The Taming of the Shrew, Katherine’s spirit is crushed by Petruchio. Later in their marriage, Alison’s mother was crushed by her father’s behavior.
Her father joined the Army after dropping out of his graduate program. While deployed, he began to fall in love with the work of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Inspired by the author’s focus on sentimentality and extravagant language, he sent Alison’s mother increasingly sentimental letters expressing his passionate love for her.
However, this passion quickly faded as their marriage began. Alison’s parents almost never showed affection for one another. In fact, Alison only remembered two instances of any kind of intimacy between the two:
Fighting was the norm in the household. Her father would take his anger out by destroying books and throwing things. In one instance, her father began to tear the pages out of library books while screaming at his wife.
Adding fuel to the fire, Alison’s father would bring some of his male students home, give them books, and offer them alcohol. He often focused on these boys more than he focused on his own family. For example, he once forgot to pick up his own son from Cub Scouts because he was too busy drinking and chatting with a high school student he brought into his library.
F. Scott Fitzgerald vs Henry James
Alison compares her father to Jay Gatsby of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Gatsby takes pride in his ability to create the illusion of class and extravagance. He started as a farm boy but makes millions bootlegging alcohol. He uses this money to throw extravagant parties and hide his simple origins. Also, Gatsby uses his wealth to engage in an affair with Daisy (a married woman he had a relationship with before being sent off to fight in WWI). Daisy is Gatsby's true passion, even though his relationship with her is seen as unethical.
Similarly, Alison’s father created the illusion of class and extravagance in the way that he renovated his house, particularly his library. Though he lived in Beech Creek almost his entire life, he saw himself as above the rest of the local population. He used his home and education to hide his simple origins. Also, he used his home and alcohol to engage in affairs with young men. These young men were her father’s true passion, even though his relationship with them was seen as unethical.
On the other hand, Alison compares her mother to Isabel Archer of Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady. Isabel leaves America for Europe hoping to experience a new life following her father’s death. She marries, and although her relationship seems to start in a good place, her husband’s affection for her disappears quickly. She later learns that her husband has been having an affair throughout the entirety of their relationship. At the end of the story, she stays with her husband despite his affairs for the sake of their child.
Similarly, Alison’s mother left New York to start a life with Alison’s father. Though their relationship seemed to start in a good place, it soon began to fall apart as her husband’s affection for her disappeared quickly. After they were married, Alison’s mother discovered that her husband was having affairs with multiple men throughout the entirety of their relationship. Despite this, she stayed in the marriage and raised three children with him.
An old term for homosexual was “invert.” The term implied that homosexuals behaved in a manner opposite to their natural sex. While that term isn’t an accurate description of all gay individuals, Alison noticed the accuracy of the term when describing her and her father.
For example, her father loved flowers and gardening, an activity typically associated with femininity. He would spend his time cultivating a variety of plants. Alison later compared this to his inclination towards cultivating his relationships with young men. Alison, on the other hand, hated flowers and preferred playing sports with her male cousins, an activity typically associated with masculinity. In fact, Alison wanted so badly to be masculine that she once tried to convince her brothers to call her Albert while they were out on a camping trip.
In another instance, she and her father were eating at a diner when a masculine-looking female truck driver entered the diner. Alison felt excited and envious seeing her. When her father noticed, he scornfully asked if Alison wanted to end up looking like her. Alison lied and said she didn’t, but the image of that woman stuck with her for years.
Alison found herself intrigued by the female body where her father seemed disinterested. On one camping trip, Alison’s father was given a risqué calendar. He didn’t even open the photo. Alison, on the other hand, sneaked a look and immediately felt shame for being interested in what was inside.
They did have one thing in common: they both enjoyed looking at masculine figures. However, the reason for their enjoyment was different. Her father wanted the masculine men. Alison wanted to be masculine.
Alison’s father tried to live a double life: one in which he was the perfect family man, and another in which he followed his sexual predilections. He would often take trips without Alison’s mother. He would bring his children and whatever boy was helping him with housework at the time.
For a while, this boy was Roy. He babysat the kids and helped Alison’s father with a variety of tasks. He accompanied them to the beach one year. After her father’s death, Alison found a photo of Roy taken during this trip by her father. In the photo, Roy is lying in bed wearing only his underwear. At the time, Roy was 17.
She doesn’t blame her father for his behavior. In fact, she wonders if she would have had the guts to be openly gay in the 1950s, or if she would have done exactly as her father had and made a life for herself pretending to be straight. Though discrimination against homosexuals still existed in the 80s, it was nothing compared to that of the 50s. For example, while she and her lesbian friends were once denied entrance to a bar because of their sexuality, the lesbians of the 50s had to deal with bar raids and cross-dressing rules.
Marcel Proust
Marcel Proust was a critically-acclaimed French novelist active at the turn of the 20th century. Also, he was reported gay. Like Alison’s father, Proust was obsessed with the beauty of flowers.
In his book, Remembrance of Things Past (aka In Search of Lost Time), Proust describes a garden filled with beautiful flowers. When his narrator looks through the garden and sees a girl sitting within, he immediately falls in love with her. Alison suggests that his love wasn’t necessarily for the girl, but for her surroundings. Alison saw a similar trait in her father. She believed that part of her father’s initial attraction to her mother developed because she lived on Christopher Street in New York City—an area known for its open LGBT community.
The town of Beech Creek had a strange hold over Alison’s father’s family. In fact, in the small town of only 800 residents, there were 26 families that shared the last name of Bechdel. Alison later suggested that her father may have killed himself in part because of his perceived inability to escape the small-minded town.
Similar to the isolation of Beech Creek from other communities, Alison experienced isolation within her own home. Her parents were both artistic. Her father had the house to fix. Her mother played piano and rehearsed for her productions. When she tried to interact with either of them, they would often ignore her to focus on their work. She describes her home as an artist's colony in which each member of the family became consumed by their passion, but in isolation.
In addition to the disorder she felt within her household, Alison also developed an actual disorder at the age of 10. Initially, her obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) involved counting the drips in the bathtub. She couldn’t turn off the faucet until the final drip count was an even number and not a multiple of 13. Soon, her behaviors intensified:
During her OCD phase, Alison started a diary. Initially, the entries were bland and straightforward. However, she soon began questioning how she knew that everything she was writing down was objectively true. She began writing the words “I think” in small letters between sentences. She soon developed a symbol to represent the phrase “I think” and began to cover her diary entries with it. The symbols covered up names and pronouns that referred to other people because she couldn’t confirm what they actually saw or thought.
In one instance, a bad car accident led to the Fun Home having three funerals at once. One of the people that died was a distant cousin who was exactly her age. Her diary entries that discussed those days were almost completely obscured by the “I think” symbol drawn over the entire entry because she couldn't be certain of what other people were experiencing or seeing, and she had to satiate her need to be completely accurate in her diary entries.
Slowly and with the help of her mother, she began to give up her compulsions. She would dictate her diary entries to her mother and developed dates by which she had to stop certain behaviors. Ironically, she was just as obsessive about kicking the habits as she had been with adopting them.
Alison experienced a chaotic summer in 1974 because of events in the country, in her community, and in her personal life. In the United States, the Watergate scandal was coming to a head. In her community, locusts had risen from the ground and infested the town. In her personal life, Alison started puberty and her father got arrested for giving alcohol to an underage boy.
When Alison was 13, she got her first period in June. At first, she didn’t mention it in her diary or tell anyone about this development, not even her mother. She hoped that ignoring it would make it go away. However, when she got her second period, she knew that she had to do something. For a while, she used tissue paper so that she could wait for the right moment to address her development. Though she almost brought it up on a few occasions, Alison didn’t tell her mother that she had gotten her period until around December of that year—almost 6 months after her first one.
Alison’s father had a run-in with the police after an incident with an underage boy. Her father picked up a 17-year old and told him that his brother had gone missing. The boy got in the car and they went looking for his brother. During their search, her father purchased a six-pack of beer and offered the boy a drink. After they drove around for a few hours, he dropped the boy off at his home. His brother, who hadn’t been missing in the first place, recognized the vehicle and immediately called the police.
Alison’s father was sent a summons and was charged with giving alcohol to a minor. Though Alison never knew the nature of her father’s relationship with the boys, she later inferred that it was sexual.
While in court, the magistrate focused solely on the alcohol charge and never brought up the nature of Alison’s father’s relationship with the two boys. The judge agreed to dismiss the charges if he agreed to 6 months of counseling. Alison implies that the nature of the sentencing had little to do with the liquor charge and more to do with the unspoken accusation: a homosexual act with a minor.
Oscar Wilde and The Importance of Being Earnest
Oscar Wilde was an Irish playwright and poet responsible for many iconic works, such as The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Earnest. He was also known to be gay.
In Earnest, Wilde makes sly references to homosexuality including his use of gluttony as a metaphor for illicit desire and the inclusion of the address of a known gay activist. (Shortform note: “Earnest” was a slang term for homosexual in the late 19th century.) During the summer that her father was taken to court, her mother was in a production of The Importance of Being Earnest. Alison notes the irony of her mother’s involvement in a show that has notable homosexual undertones while her husband actively engaged in homosexual activities. In fact, during the summer, he even flirted with men from her mother’s cast.
Shortly after The Importance of Being Earnest originally premiered, Wilde was put on trial for sodomy. Alison compares Wilde’s trial to that of her father’s. Where Wilde confronted his sexuality in the courtroom, her father never mentioned his. Wilde gave an impassioned speech that was met with applause from members of the court, while her father stayed relatively silent throughout his proceedings. Though Wilde became a symbol for the gay community, he was harshly punished for speaking out. On the other hand, her father stayed quiet but avoided severe punishment or humiliation. Alison uses this comparison to inform why her father chose to stay silent and avoided taking a stand.
While on a trip to NYC in 1976, a 15-year old Alison saw the city in a new light. She was traveling with her father and brothers to take part in the bicentennial celebrations. They stayed with a family friend who lived in Greenwich Village, a well-known LGBT community. During her time there, she began to notice the well-groomed, homosexual men walking on the street, not trying to hide their more feminine behaviors. Her family went to the ballet, had drinks with a gay couple, and saw A Chorus Line. These activities introduced her to members of the LGBT community and exposed her to LGBT stories.
However, the trip was not without its problems, and Alison’s father wasn’t always an attentive parent. At one point on the trip, one of Alison’s younger brothers, John, wandered off. He walked through a known cruising area and was approached by a man who asked if he “wanted to see his boat.” At the first opportunity, John ran back to the apartment. In addition to John’s close call, Alison’s father would leave his kids to go out and “have a drink” late at night. Alison implies that he was likely meeting up with men and leaving his children to fulfill his sexual needs.
Years later, Alison moved to New York. She believes that, had her father not died from the car accident, there was a good chance he’d have died shortly after with the emergence of the AIDS crisis. This is because the LGBT community in New York was the center of the AIDS epidemic in the 80s, and Alison’s father had a tendency to go out at night and sleep with men from that community when he visited the city.
While she stands behind this observation, she notes it may be merely her attempt to find peace or meaning within her father’s passing. It would make him a tragic figure who lived a secretly promiscuous lifestyle because homophobia had forced him to repress his identity.
Once Alison developed the ability to discuss literature in an intellectual way, she and her father began to connect. When Alison was in high school, she was assigned to her father’s English class. During this time, she discovered that she enjoyed the same types of books that her father did. Their discussions of literature extended beyond the classroom and helped them develop a closer relationship.
When Alison started college, she and her father actively talked about the books she was assigned in her English classes. However, his excitement for the literature she was reading soon left little room for her to have her own thoughts or opinions. She believes that he was living vicariously through her instead of connecting with her. Because of this, she began to move away from the literature that her father loved and began to focus more on her journey into LGBT culture.
At one point, Alison swore she was never going to take another English class during her time at school, but an oversight led her to take a January-term course discussing Ulysses by James Joyce. Ulysses was Alison’s father’s favorite book. He gave her a variety of materials to study before she began reading Joyce’s novel. One of these resources was Earthly Paradise by Colette. Collette was an influential voice in women’s independence in France and a known lesbian. At the time, Alison believed that her father gave her that book as a sign that he knew about her sexuality.
When Alison came out to her father, he didn’t seem upset. In fact, he encouraged her to explore while in college but didn’t want her to label herself a “lesbian.” In a letter he wrote to her shortly after she came out, her father talked as if she already knew about his sexuality. While he never directly said that he was gay or bisexual, he talked about how he thought about putting a label on his sexuality for years, but never did. He disclosed his envy of the “freedom” Alison and her contemporaries had to express their sexuality in the 80s.
When Alison returned home for the first time after coming out, her mother revealed many of her father’s transgressions. While sharing a bottle of wine, her mother explained the affairs her father had when they spent time in New York. She talked about his out-of-control behaviors such as shoplifting and speeding. She eventually told Alison of her plan to leave her father, a plan that Alison supported.
While home from school, Alison and her father went to see a movie. On the car ride to the theater, Alison asked her father if he gave her the Colette book as a way of reaching out about her sexuality. While he claimed that he didn’t, he said that he had his suspicions.
Then, Alison’s father opened up a little about his experiences with men. He said that his first time was when he was fourteen with a man at the Fun Home. He also said that he used to dress up in girl’s clothing, just like Alison used to dress up in boy’s clothing. Though the conversation didn’t delve any deeper, Alison felt as though they had finally discussed the unspoken bond they shared over their sexuality. They never discussed it again.
Following Alison and her father’s conversation, Alison continued to connect with her father. In fact, the night before he died, a friend of the family remarked that their closeness was unusual. Although her father was like the figure of Icarus, a figure falling from grace because of his recklessness, he was there to catch and support her when she made the leap into her sexuality.
The Odyssey (Homer) and Ulysses (Joyce)
The Odyssey is an epic poem written by Greek poet Homer, who tells the story of Odysseus as he overcomes massive obstacles to return home to his wife, Penelope, in Ithaca. Ulysses is a novel by the acclaimed Irish novelist James Joyce. In Ulysses, Joyce parallels the journey of his protagonist, Leopold Bloom, to that of Odysseus in Homer’s epic poem. Alison relates many of her later experiences with her father to Joyce’s novel.
In Ulysses, Bloom has a moment of reconciliation with his friend Stephen. Though this moment is a direct parallel to the moment of reconnection between Odysseus and his son Telemachus when the hero returns to Ithaca, there is much less emotion than in Homer’s work. Alison calls her moment with her father in the car their “Ithaca moment.” She compares it more directly to Joyce’s work as their reconciliation was not as emotional as in Homer’s epic.
At one point in Ulysses, Bloom contemplates the death of his father, Rudolph, who had left a note and then killed himself because of the persecution he experienced as a Jewish man. Though her father didn’t leave a note, she compares her father’s death as a closeted man in Beech Creek, PA to that of Rudolph as a Jewish man in anti-Semitic Dublin.
Throughout the course of her life, Alison and her father’s relationship changed. Though it began as a cold and distanced relationship, it eventually evolved into one of connection and empathy.
List the ways that Alison’s relationship with her father changed from childhood to adulthood. Think about their connection through literature and their sexuality.
Now, think about a relationship that you have with a family member or close friend that has changed drastically over time. How would you describe the relationship at the beginning?
How would you describe the relationship now?
Why do you think the relationship changed in the way that it did? Think about the experiences you’ve shared with this person that influenced your connection with them.
Alison’s father lived a double life: one in which he pretended to be the perfect family man, and another in which he embraced his sexuality.
Reflect a personal trait or attribute that you feel comfortable sharing with the people around you. Describe it and explain why you're willing to share it.
Now, reflect on a personal trait or attribute that you don’t feel comfortable sharing with the people around you. Describe it and explain why you keep it to yourself.