Fun Home By Alison Bechdel

“Your life does not get better by chance, it gets better by change.” Jim Rohns quote highlights the basis of Debra Oswald’s play Gary’s house, and also Miroshav Holubs poem The Door. This essay will explore the notion that change causes people to shift their thinking and actions after significant catalysts. Gary’s House illustrates many of the issues and predicaments confronted by the characters and how their alteration in behaviour can have a beneficial outcome for them or others around them. The concept of "The Door" is based on the idea of taking risks and embracing change. The poet uses persuasive techniques to encourage and provoke the audience to take action.

Throughout the course of the book, A Long Way Home, Saroo Brierley, the author, encounters a series of traumatic experiences that lead to bittersweet moments. Unlike a normal child’s infancy, Saroo was physically and mentally consuming. Through his experience, we are able to get a glimpse of the many struggles and hardships young children live in India daily. His petrifying experiences of living on the streets, Liluah, and Nava Jeevan finally lead to his safe haven of being taken by the Brierley’s.

Through my understanding of the book, Homeward Bound by Elaine Tyler May explores two traditional depictions of the 1950s, namely suburban domesticity and anticommunism. She intertwines both historical events into a captivating argument. Throughout the book, May aims to discover why “Post-war Americans accepted parenting as well as marriage with so much zeal” unlike their own parents and children. Her findings are that the “cold war ideology and domestic revival” were somewhat linked together. She saw “domestic containment” as an outgrowth of frights and desires that bloomed after the war. However, psychotherapeutic services were as much a boom then as now, and helped offer “private and personal solutions to social problems.” May reflects her views on the origin of domestic containment, and how it affected the lives of people who tried to live by it.

In the following essay, I shall be exploring the representation of identity in Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, mainly through a postcolonial feminist lens. My analysis will focus on Bruce and Alison’s interactions with each other and how Bechdel deconstructs the stereotypical ideals of gender roles and sexuality, via intertextual references.

Shifting the focus from ideas of racial constructs to fluidity of the human condition. By, doing this Larsen illustrates the husband as the example of societal “norms” by repressing such feeling and uses Clare and Irene as the more “progressive” example of identity fluidity.

Literature can be a powerful tool for social change. Red Rooms by Cherie Dimaline is about the weaving of indigenous stories through the common element that they were patrons of an urban hotel. The narrator, Naomi, works as a housekeeper at the hotel and imagines the past, present and future existence of the patrons by what they left behind. Dimaline shows how indigenous histories and knowledge operate, in that they are not linear, and they do not have a definite beginning or an end. The novel subtly shows the need for an Indigenous resurgence, but the book itself is an act of resurgence because it shows the importance of indigenous literature. This paper will argue that Red Rooms itself acts as an act of indigenous resurgence

Stephanie Coontz is a teacher, historian, author and a scholar activist. She has also very indulged in the world of public debate on families, this mostly due possible because of her extensive skills to study modern families as well as historical patterns. In her book The Way We Never Were, Coontz presents a historical look at the family and how it has changed over time. Her interest in the subject comes for her need to understand how families functioned in the past and present, and what lead to notion and definition of family nowadays.

In “Invisible Child,” a New York Times article written by Andrea Elliot, we follow a day in the life of a young African American girl, Dasani, growing up in New York City. However, instead of living in an “Empire State of Mind,” Dasani lives in the slums, growing up homeless with her two drug addicted parents and seven siblings. Dasani often finds herself taking care of her siblings, making sure they have enough to eat, tying shoelaces, changing diapers, getting them to the bus stop in time, and the list goes on. An 11 year old girl, essentially taking care of a whole family, as well as taking care of herself by going to school, receiving an education, and partaking in extra-curricular activities. Elliot captures the life and struggles of a family well under the poverty line, giving us an unprecedented look into what Dasani must do each day not just to grow up in New York City, but to survive.

In Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, Alison Bechdel composes a graphic memoir to inform readers about her journey of coming out as a lesbian to her parents. To add to this note, Bechdel also gives details about her family and how she discovers her father’s true sexuality – he is attracted to males. She builds the story around the tragic event of her father’s mysterious death.

Bechdel’s fight for her gender identity was a constant in Fun Home, as was Bruce’s attempts to force femininity onto her, driven by his need to express his gender identity vicariously through her. Bechdel’s writing explains the obvious expressions of gender identity such as page 14 when Bruce decorated Bechdel’s room femininely despite her protests, prompting her to claim that her house was going to be made of all metal. But the illustrations depict the less obvious manifestations of gender identity. On page 95, we see Bechdel calling herself a, “connoisseur of masculinity,” with a Western film playing while her father is in the background arranging flowers (Bechdel, 95).

“Kath and Mouse” is a short story written by Janet Mcnaughton. The theme of the story is about the protagonist called Helen changing her personality and changing other people’s veiw about her. The main protagonist of the story called Kevin who is the twin brother of the antagonist Kath always stop Kath bullying Helen. On the contrary, Kath is a foil character in the whole story. She provides contrast to Helen. She bullys and makes fun of Helen. She even called Helen a mouse. Kath asked Helen whether she plays an instrument and Helen answer with a quite voice”No instrument. I just sing” (McNaughton, 63). This sentence show that Helen is a quite girl and have not so much confidence about herself. Kath incited Helen “ Sing! No choir in this school. Guess

The fundamental characteristic of magical realism is its duality, which enables the reader to experience both the character’s past and the present. In the novel, Monkey Beach, Eden Robinson uses this literary device to address the the trauma and mistreatment of the Haisla community in Canada by unveiling the intimate memories of the protagonist, Lisamarie, and the resulting consequences of this oppression. Monkey Beach illustrates how abuse in the past leads to another form of self-medication in the future - a neverending, vicious cycle for the members of the Haisla community. Many characters in Monkey Beach are scarred from childhood sexual abuse and family neglect, and resort to drug and alcohol abuse as a coping mechanism. These

In Fun Home, Alison Bechdel demonstrates how myth and stereotyping contribute to the construction of prejudice. Alison’s father, Bruce Bechdel, lived a false life by denying his sexual orientation and created the illusion of a “normal” family life. By marrying a female and creating offspring, he perpetuated the public illusion that he had the perfect home and family. Despite this myth of perfect domestication, the true private life of the Bechdel family could be described as dysfunctional. Bechdel “witnessed only two gestures of action between” (Bechdel 68) her parents, which consisted of her father giving her mother “a chaste peck before leaving on a weekend trip” (Bechdel 68) and one time when her mother “put her hand on his back” (Bechdel 68) as they watched television. Bechdel writes how on both occasions, she “was astonished and discomforted” (Bechdel 68) and suggests that both her mother and father preferred “fiction to reality” (Bechdel 85). Both Bruce Bechdel and his wife, lived in a world where they did not acknowledge reality; it was easier for them to live a lie then to come to terms with Bruce’s homosexual identity. The conflict within the family could be attributed to Bruce’s suppression of his sexuality, which in turn, could be attributed to growing up in a time period when it was

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic is an autobiography written by Alison Bechdel. The graphic novel takes its readers through Alison Bechdel’s childhood using engaging diction and detailed drawings. One of the big themes of Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic is the discovery of one’s sexual orientation. Over the course of her life, Alison Bechdel eventually comes to the realization that she is a lesbian. Ultimately, Alison Bechdel uses this novel to recount her experience of events that helped to shape her personal identity, which resulted in a transformation of the way she sees herself. In the end, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic is a wonderful narrative that shows its readers the complexity of personal identity, and how things like love, the values of

When thinking of the term comfort food, I think of a food that invites a feeling of satisfaction, contentment, and solace. It not only soothes the mind, body, and soul but also nourishes it at the same time; sometimes possibly even jogging a memory from times past. We eat these foods on many different occasions and also rely on them during unfortunate circumstances. Whatever the case may be these foods give us the feelings of warmth and coziness as well as a sense of security; like a pacifier to a baby. It is true, everyone likes to be comforted as well eat food. Though, sometimes I wonder, how the union of these two words, comfort and food took place.