Fun Home (subtitled A Family Tragicomic) is a 2006 graphic memoir by American writer Alison Bechdel, author of the comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For. It chronicles the author's childhood and youth in rural Pennsylvania, USA, focusing on her complex relationship with her father. The book addresses themes of sexual orientation, gender roles, suicide, dysfunctional family life, and the role of literature in understanding oneself and one's family. Writing and illustrating Fun Home took seven years, in part because of Bechdel's laborious artistic process, which includes photographing herself in poses for each human figure.^[1][2][3][4]

Fun Home has been both a popular and critical success, and spent two weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list.^[5][6] In The New York Times Sunday Book Review, Sean Wilsey called it "a pioneering work, pushing two genres (comics and memoir) in multiple new directions."^[7] Several publications named Fun Home as one of the best books of 2006; it was also included in several lists of the best books of the 2000s.^[8] It was nominated for several awards, including the National Book Critics Circle Award and three Eisner Awards (one of which it won).^[8][9] A French translation of Fun Home was serialized in the newspaper Libération; the book was an official selection of the Angoulême International Comics Festival and has been the subject of an academic conference in France.^[10][11][12] Fun Home has been the subject of numerous academic publications in areas such as biography studies and cultural studies, as part of a larger turn towards serious academic investment in the study of comics/sequential art.^[13]

Fun Home also generated controversy: a public library in Missouri removed Fun Home from its shelves for five months after local residents objected to its contents.^[14][15]

Plot and thematic summary[link]

The narrative of Fun Home is non-linear and recursive.^[16] Incidents are told and re-told in the light of new information or themes.^[17] Bechdel describes the structure of Fun Home as a labyrinth, "going over the same material, but starting from the outside and spiraling in to the center of the story."^[18] In an essay on memoirs and truth in the academic journal PMLA, Nancy K. Miller explains that as Bechdel revisits scenes and themes "she re-creates memories in which the force of attachment generates the structure of the memoir itself."^[19] Additionally, the memoir derives its structure from allusions to various works of literature, Greek myth and visual arts; the events of Bechdel's family life during her childhood and adolescence are presented through this allusive lens.^[16] Miller notes that the narratives of the referenced literary texts "provide clues, both true and false, to the mysteries of family relations."^[19]

The memoir focuses on Bechdel's family, and is centered around her relationship with her father, Bruce. Bruce Bechdel was a funeral director and high school English teacher in Beech Creek, where Alison and her siblings grew up. The book's title comes from the family nickname for the funeral home, the family business in which Bruce Bechdel grew up and later worked; the phrase also refers ironically to Bruce Bechdel's tyrannical domestic rule.^[20] Bruce Bechdel's two occupations are reflected in Fun Home's focus on death and literature.^[21]

In the beginning of the book, the memoir exhibits Bruce Bechdel's obsession with restoring the family's Victorian home.^[21] His obsessive need to restore the house is connected to his emotional distance from his family, which he expressed in coldness and occasional bouts of abusive rage.^[21][22] This emotional distance, in turn, is connected with his closeted homosexual tendencies.^[23] Bruce Bechdel had homosexual relationships in the military and with his high school students; some of those students were also family friends and babysitters.^[24] At the age of 44, two weeks after his wife requested a divorce, he stepped into the path of an oncoming Sunbeam Bread truck and was killed.^[25] Although the evidence is equivocal, Alison Bechdel concludes that her father committed suicide.^[21][26][27]

The story also deals with Alison Bechdel's own struggle with her sexual identity, reaching a catharsis in the realization that she is a lesbian and her coming out to her parents.^[21][28] The memoir frankly examines her sexual development, including transcripts from her childhood diary, anecdotes about masturbation, and tales of her first sexual experiences with her girlfriend, Joan.^[29] In addition to their common homosexuality, Alison and Bruce Bechdel share obsessive-compulsive tendencies and artistic leanings, albeit with opposing aesthetic senses: "I was Spartan to my father's Athenian. Modern to his Victorian. Butch to his nelly. Utilitarian to his aesthete."^[30] This opposition was a source of tension in their relationship, as both tried to express their dissatisfaction with their given gender roles: "Not only were we inverts, we were inversions of each other. While I was trying to compensate for something unmanly in him, he was attempting to express something feminine through me. It was a war of cross-purposes, and so doomed to perpetual escalation."^[31] However, shortly before Bruce Bechdel's death, he and his daughter have a conversation in which Bruce confesses some of his sexual history; this is presented as a partial resolution to the conflict between father and daughter.^[32]

At several points in the book, Bechdel questions whether her decision to come out as a lesbian was one of the triggers for her father's suicide.^[19][33] This question is never answered definitively, but Bechdel closely examines the connection between her father's closeted sexuality and her own open lesbianism, revealing her debt to her father in both positive and negative lights.^[19][21][27]

Themes[link]

Fun Home has several themes recurring throughout the book. The biggest theme, arguably, is sexual orientation. Bechdel tells the readers of her journey of discovering her own sexuality through books. "My realization at nineteen that I was a lesbian came about in a manner consistent with my bookish upbringing.""^[34] Her exposure (from reading literal definitions in dictionaries, reading interviews of others like her, etc.) helped her come to terms with her sexuality, but in truth, the hints of it plagued her childhood: her desire "for the right to exchange [her] tank suit for a pair of shorts" in Cannes"^[35] or her desire for her brothers to call her Albert instead of Alison on one camping trip ".^[36] However, Bechdel also reveals that she wasn't alone in her choice of partners; her father also exhibited some homosexual behaviors, but in a different way than Alison. "I'd been upstaged, demoted from protagonist in my own drama to comic relief in my parents' tragedy" quoted on page 58 when her mother reveals Bechdel's father's secret. Though both, father and daughter, had similar situations (Bechdel was a lesbian while her father was gay or bisexual), the two handled their issues differently. Bechdel chose to accept the fact and not hide from the issue, taking a female partner and going to "gay union" meetings. Bechdel was open about her sexuality before she'd even been in a same-sex relationship (of any sort). Her father, on the other hand, had had countless affairs with men but wasn't open about it ".^[37] This may be due to homophobia (his and/or others'), or because he was married with a family. In any case, it's clear that he's afraid of coming out, as illustrated by "the fear in his eyes" when the conversation topic is dangerously close to homosexuality ".^[38]

In addition to sexual orientation, the memoir touches on the theme of gender identity. Bechdel had viewed her father as "a big sissy""^[39] while her father constantly tried to change his daughter into a more feminine person throughout her childhood.

The third, underlying theme of death is also portrayed. Though there is debate as to whether Bechdel's father's death was an accident or suicide, she thinks it much more likely that he killed himself ".^[40] Whether this was because of his own sexuality or Bechdel's (or some other cause) remains unclear.

Allusions[link]

The allusive references used in Fun Home are not merely structural or stylistic: Bechdel writes, "I employ these allusions ... not only as descriptive devices, but because my parents are most real to me in fictional terms. And perhaps my cool aesthetic distance itself does more to convey the Arctic climate of our family than any particular literary comparison."^[41] Bechdel, as the narrator, considers her relationship to her father through the myth of Daedalus and Icarus.^[42] As a child, she confused her family and their Gothic Revival home with the Addams Family seen in the cartoons of Charles Addams.^[43] Bruce Bechdel's suicide is discussed with reference to Albert Camus' novel A Happy Death and essay The Myth of Sisyphus.^[44] His careful construction of an aesthetic and intellectual world is compared to The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the narrator suggests that Bruce Bechdel modeled elements of his life after Fitzgerald's, as portrayed in the biography The Far Side of Paradise.^[45] His wife Helen is compared with the protagonists of the Henry James novels Washington Square and The Portrait of a Lady.^[46] Helen Bechdel was an amateur actress, and plays in which she acted are also used to illuminate aspects of her marriage. She met Bruce Bechdel when the two were appearing in a college production of The Taming of the Shrew, and Alison Bechdel intimates that this was "a harbinger of my parents' later marriage".^[47] Helen Bechdel's role as Lady Bracknell in a local production of The Importance of Being Earnest is shown in some detail; Bruce Bechdel is compared with Oscar Wilde.^[48] His homosexuality is also examined with allusion to Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time.^[49] The father and daughter's artistic and obsessive-compulsive tendencies are discussed with reference to E. H. Shepard's illustrations for The Wind in the Willows.^[50] Bruce and Alison Bechdel exchange hints about their sexualities by exchanging memoirs: the father gives the daughter Earthly Paradise, an autobiographical collection of the writings of Colette; shortly afterwards, in what Alison Bechdel describes as "an eloquent unconscious gesture", she leaves a library copy of Kate Millett's memoir Flying for him.^[51] Finally, returning to the Daedalus myth, Alison Bechdel casts herself as Stephen Dedalus and her father as Leopold Bloom in James Joyce's Ulysses, with parallel references to the myth of Telemachus and Odysseus.^[52]

In addition to the literary allusions which are explicitly acknowledged in the text, Bechdel incorporates visual allusions to television programs and other items of pop culture into her artwork, often as images on a television in the background of a panel.^[23] These visual references include the film It's a Wonderful Life, Bert and Ernie of Sesame Street, the Smiley Face, Yogi Bear, Batman, the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote, the resignation of Richard Nixon and The Flying Nun.^[23][53]

Artwork[link]

Fun Home is drawn in black line art with a gray-green ink wash.^[2] Sean Wilsey wrote that Fun Home's panels "combine the detail and technical proficiency of R. Crumb with a seriousness, emotional complexity and innovation completely its own."^[7] Writing in the Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide, Diane Ellen Hamer contrasted "Bechdel's habit of drawing her characters very simply and yet distinctly" with "the attention to detail that she devotes to the background, those TV shows and posters on the wall, not to mention the intricacies of the funeral home as a recurring backdrop."^[23] Bechdel told an interviewer for The Comics Journal that the richness of each panel of Fun Home was very deliberate:

It's very important for me that people be able to read the images in the same kind of gradually unfolding way as they're reading the text. I don't like pictures that don't have information in them. I want pictures that you have to read, that you have to decode, that take time, that you can get lost in. Otherwise what's the point?^[54]

Bechdel wrote and illustrated Fun Home over a seven-year period.^[1] Her meticulous artistic process made the task of illustration slow. She began each page by creating a framework in Adobe Illustrator, on which she placed the text and drew rough figures.^[2][3] She used extensive photo reference and, for many panels, posed for each human figure herself, using a digital camera to record her poses.^{[2][3][4][27]} Bechdel also used photo reference for background elements. For example, to illustrate a panel depicting fireworks seen from a Greenwich Village rooftop on July 4, 1976, she used Google Images to find a photograph of the New York skyline taken from that particular building in that period.^[3][55][56] She also painstakingly copied by hand many family photographs, letters, local maps and excerpts from her own childhood journal, incorporating these images into her narrative.^[55] After using the reference material to draw a tight framework for the page, Bechdel copied the line art illustration onto plate finish Bristol board for the final inked page, which she then scanned into her computer.^[2][3] The gray-green ink wash for each page was drawn on a separate page of watercolor paper, and combined with the inked image using Photoshop.^[2][3][27] Bechdel chose the greenish wash color for its flexibility, and because it had "a bleak, elegiac quality" which suited the subject matter.^[57] Bechdel attributes this detailed creative process to her "barely controlled obsessive-compulsive disorder".^[55][58]

Publication and reception[link]

Fun Home was first printed in hardcover by Houghton Mifflin (Boston, New York) on June 8, 2006.^[59] This edition appeared on the New York Times' Hardcover Nonfiction bestseller list for two weeks, covering the period from June 18 to July 1, 2006.^[5][6] It continued to sell well, and by February 2007 there were 55,000 copies in print.^[60] A trade paperback edition was published in the United Kingdom by Random House under the Jonathan Cape imprint on September 14, 2006; Houghton Mifflin published a paperback edition under the Mariner Books imprint on June 5, 2007.^[61][62]

In the summer of 2006, a French translation of Fun Home was serialized in the Paris newspaper Libération (which had previously serialized Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi).^[10] This translation, by Corinne Julve and Lili Sztajn, was subsequently published by Éditions Denoël on October 26, 2006.^[63] In January 2007, Fun Home was an official selection of the Angoulême International Comics Festival.^[11] In the same month, the Anglophone Studies department of the Université François Rabelais, Tours sponsored an academic conference on Bechdel's work, with presentations in Paris and Tours.^[12] At this conference, papers were presented examining Fun Home from several perspectives: as containing "trajectories" filled with paradoxical tension; as a text interacting with images as a paratext; and as a search for meaning using drag as a metaphor.^[64][65][66] These papers and others on Bechdel and her work were later published in the peer-reviewed journal GRAAT (Groupe de Recherches Anglo-Américaines de Tours, or Tours Anglo-American Research Group).^[67][68]

An Italian translation was published by Rizzoli in January 2007.^[69][70] In Brazil, Conrad Editora published a Portuguese translation in 2007.^[71] A German translation was published by Kiepenheuer & Witsch in January 2008.^[72] The book has also been translated into Hungarian, Korean, and Polish,^[73] and a Chinese translation has been scheduled for publication.^[74]

In October 2006, a resident of Marshall, Missouri attempted to have Fun Home and Craig Thompson's Blankets, both graphic novels, removed from the city's public library.^[75] Supporters of the books' removal characterized them as "pornography" and expressed concern that they would be read by children.^[14][76] Marshall Public Library Director Amy Crump defended the books as having been well-reviewed in "reputable, professional book review journals," and characterized the removal attempt as a step towards "the slippery slope of censorship".^[75][76] On October 11, 2006, the library's board appointed a committee to create a materials selection policy, and removed Fun Home and Blankets from circulation until the new policy was approved.^[77][78] The committee "decided not to assign a prejudicial label or segregate [the books] by a prejudicial system", and presented a materials selection policy to the board.^[79][80] On March 14, 2007, the Marshall Public Library Board of Trustees voted to return both Fun Home and Blankets to the library's shelves.^[15] Bechdel described the attempted banning as "a great honor", and described the incident as "part of the whole evolution of the graphic-novel form."^[81]

In 2008, an instructor at the University of Utah placed Fun Home on the syllabus of a mid-level English course, "Critical Introduction to English Literary Forms".^[82] One student objected to the assignment, and was given an alternate reading in accordance with the university's religious accommodation policy.^[82] The student subsequently contacted a local organization called "No More Pornography", which started an online petition calling for the book to be removed from the syllabus.^[83] Vincent Pecora, the chair of the university's English department, defended Fun Home and the instructor.^[83] The university said that it had no plans to remove the book.^[83]

Reviews and awards[link]

Alison Bechdel at a London signing for Fun Home

Fun Home was positively reviewed in many publications. The Times of London described Fun Home as "a profound and important book;" Salon.com called it "a beautiful, assured piece of work;" and The New York Times ran two separate reviews and a feature on the memoir.^{[7][21][84][85][86]} In one New York Times review, Sean Wilsey called Fun Home "a pioneering work, pushing two genres (comics and memoir) in multiple new directions" and "a comic book for lovers of words".^[7] Jill Soloway, writing in the Los Angeles Times, praised the work overall but commented that Bechdel's reference-heavy prose is at times "a little opaque".^[87] Conversely, a reviewer in The Tyee felt that "the narrator's insistence on linking her story to those of various Greek myths, American novels and classic plays" was "forced" and "heavy-handed".^[56] By contrast, the Seattle Times' reviewer wrote positively of the book's use of literary reference, calling it "staggeringly literate".^[88] The Village Voice said that Fun Home "shows how powerfully—and economically—the medium can portray autobiographical narrative. With two-part visual and verbal narration that isn't simply synchronous, comics presents a distinctive narrative idiom in which a wealth of information may be expressed in a highly condensed fashion."^[16]

Several publications listed Fun Home as one of the best books of 2006, including The New York Times, Amazon.com, The Times of London, New York magazine and Publishers Weekly, which ranked it as the best comic book of 2006.^{[89][90][91][92][93][94]} Salon.com named Fun Home the best nonfiction debut of 2006, admitting that they were fudging the definition of "debut" and saying, "Fun Home shimmers with regret, compassion, annoyance, frustration, pity and love—usually all at the same time and never without a pervasive, deeply literary irony about the near-impossible task of staying true to yourself, and to the people who made you who you are."^[95] Entertainment Weekly called it the best nonfiction book of the year, and Time named Fun Home the best book of 2006, describing it as "the unlikeliest literary success of 2006" and "a masterpiece about two people who live in the same house but different worlds, and their mysterious debts to each other."^[96][97]

Fun Home was a finalist for the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award, in the memoir/autobiography category.^[98][99] In 2007, Fun Home won the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Comic Book, the Stonewall Book Award for non-fiction, the Publishing Triangle-Judy Grahn Nonfiction Award, and the Lambda Literary Award in the "Lesbian Memoir and Biography" category.^{[100][101][102][103]} Fun Home was nominated for the 2007 Eisner Awards in two categories, Best Reality-Based Work and Best Graphic Album, and Bechdel was nominated as Best Writer/Artist.^[104] Fun Home won the Eisner for Best Reality-Based Work.^[9] In 2008, Entertainment Weekly placed Fun Home at #68 in its list of "New Classics" (defined as "the 100 best books from 1983 to 2008").^[105] The Guardian included Fun Home in its series "1000 novels everyone must read", noting its "beautifully rendered" details.^[106]

In 2009, Fun Home was listed as one of the best books of the previous decade by The Times of London, Entertainment Weekly and Salon.com, and as one of the best comic books of the decade by The Onion's A.V. Club.^[8][107]

In 2010, the Los Angeles Times literary blog "Jacket Copy" named Fun Home as one of "20 classic works of gay literature".^[108]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Houghton Mifflin's Fun Home press release, with excerpts from the book and video of Bechdel's artistic process
• dykestowatchoutfor.com, author Alison Bechdel's blog and official website
• What the Little Old Ladies Feel: How I told my mother about my memoir. Slate article by Bechdel

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (May 2008)

A ranch style single family home

Plans for a human home, by catalog

Many wetlands are home to birds such as these Northern Shoveler ducks.

A home is a place of residence or refuge.^[1] When it refers to a building, it is usually a place in which an individual or a family can live and store personal property. Most modern-day households contain sanitary facilities and a means of preparing food. Animals have their own homes as well, either living in the wild or shared with humans in a domesticated environment. "Home" is also used to refer to the geographical area (whether it be a suburb, town, city or country) in which a person grew up or feels they belong, or it can refer to the native habitat of a wild animal. Sometimes, as an alternative to the definition of "home" as a physical locale ("Home is where you hang your hat"), home may be perceived to have no physical location, instead, home may relate instead to a mental or emotional state of refuge or comfort. Popular sayings along these lines are "Home is where the heart is" or "You can never go home again".

There are cultures in which member lack a permanent home, such as nomadic peoples.

Terminology[link]

A houseboat on Lake Union in Seattle, Washington

Makeshift homes in Los Angeles

The word "home" can be used for various types of residential community institutions in which people can live, such as nursing, retirement homes for seniors, prisons for criminals, treatment facilities, etc., and foster homes. A home is generally a place that is close to the heart of the owner, and can become a prized possession.

In computer terminology, a 'home' may refer to a starting view that branches off into other tasks, e.g. a homepage or a desktop. In a full screen editor, home is often used to mean the top-leftmost character cell, or the leftmost cell on a line in a line editor. These are the initial ones used by left-to-right languages. A standard 101-key PC keyboard contains a Home key. Many home pages on the with introductory information, recent news or events, and links to subpages. "Home" may also refer to a home directory which contains the personal files of a given user of the computer system.

Psychological impact[link]

Since it can be said that humans are generally creatures of habit, the state of a person's home has been known to physiologically influence their behavior, emotions, and overall mental health.^{[citation needed]} The loss of a home (due to whatever reason, be it through accident or natural disaster, repossession, or in the case of children simply the decision to move on the part of the parents) can be a valid cause of relocation.

Some people may become homesick when they leave their home over an extended period of time. Sometimes homesickness can cause a person to feel actual symptoms of illness.

It has been argued that psychologically "The strongest sense of home commonly coincides geographically with a dwelling. Usually the sense of home attenuates as one moves away from that point, but it does not do so in a fixed or regular way."^[2] Furthermore, places like homes can trigger self-reflection, thoughts about who someone is or used to be or who they might become. These types of reflections also occur in places where there is a collective historical identity, such as Gettysburg or Ground Zero.^[3]

Gallery[link]

• 

  Two-story house with balconies, Texas (Harry Walker, photographer, 1900-1949)

See also[link]

References[link]

Look up home in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Home

Alison Bechdel
Alison Bechdel at a London signing for Fun Home, 2006
Born	(1960-09-10) September 10, 1960 (age 51) Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, United States
Occupation	Cartoonist, author
Nationality	American
Genres	Autobiography, social commentary
Literary movement	Underground
Notable work(s)	Dykes To Watch Out For, Fun Home
Influences R. Crumb, Mad, Charles Addams, Edward Gorey, Hergé, Howard Cruse, Roberta Gregory, Jules Feiffer[1]
Influenced Ellen Forney,[2] Paige Braddock[3]
www.dykestowatchoutfor.com

Alison Bechdel ( /ˈbÉ›kdÉ™l/ BEK-dÉ™l; born September 10, 1960) is an American cartoonist. Originally best known for the long-running comic strip Dykes To Watch Out For, in 2006 she became a best-selling and critically acclaimed author with her graphic memoir Fun Home.

Early life[link]

Alison Bechdel was born in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania to Roman Catholic parents who were teachers. Bechdel's brother is keyboard player John Bechdel, who has worked with many bands including Ministry. Her family also owned and operated a funeral home. She attended Simon's Rock College and then Oberlin College, graduating in 1981.

Career[link]

Bechdel moved to New York City and applied to many art schools but was rejected and worked in a number of office jobs in the publishing industry.

She began Dykes to Watch Out For as a single drawing labeled "Marianne, dissatisfied with the morning brew: Dykes to Watch Out For, plate no. 27".^[4] An acquaintance recommended she send her work to Womannews, a feminist newspaper, which published her first work in its June 1983 issue. Bechdel gradually moved from her early single-panel drawings to multi-paneled strips.^[5] After a year, other outlets began running the strip.

In the first years, Dykes to Watch Out For consisted of unconnected strips without a regular cast or serialized storyline. However, its structure eventually evolved into a focus on following a set group of lesbian characters. In 1986 Firebrand Books published a collection of the strips to date.^[6] In 1987 Bechdel introduced her regular characters, Mo and her friends, while living in St. Paul, Minnesota. Dykes to Watch Out For is the origin of the so-called "Bechdel test". In 1988, she began a short-lived page-length strip about the staff of a queer newspaper, titled "Servants to the Cause", for The Advocate. Bechdel has also written and drawn autobiographical strips and has done illustrations for magazines and websites. She became a full-time cartoonist in 1990 and later moved near Burlington, Vermont. She currently resides in Bolton, Vermont. Bechdel is the Mellon Residential Fellow for Arts and Practice at the Richard and Mary L. Gray Center at the University of Chicago.

[edit] Fun Home

In 2006, Bechdel published Fun Home, an autobiographical "tragicomic" chronicling her childhood and the years before and after her father's death. Fun Home has received more widespread mainstream attention than Bechdel's earlier work, with reviews in Entertainment Weekly, People and several features in The New York Times. Fun Home spent two weeks on the New York Times Hardcover Nonfiction bestseller list.^[7][8]

Fun Home was hailed as one of the best books of 2006 by numerous sources, including The New York Times,^[9] amazon.com,^[10][11] The Times of London,^[12] Publishers Weekly,^[13] salon.com,^[14] New York magazine,^[15] and Entertainment Weekly.^[15]

Time magazine named Alison Bechdel's Fun Home number one of its "10 Best Books of the Year." Lev Grossman and Richard LeCayo described Fun Home as "the unlikeliest literary success of 2006," and called it "a stunning memoir about a girl growing up in a small town with her cryptic, perfectionist dad and slowly realizing that a) she is gay and b) he is too. ... Bechdel's breathtakingly smart commentary duets with eloquent line drawings. Forget genre and sexual orientation: this is a masterpiece about two people who live in the same house but different worlds, and their mysterious debts to each other."^[16]

Fun Home was a finalist for the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award in the memoir/autobiography category.^[17][18] It also won the 2007 Eisner Award for Best Reality-Based Work.^[19] Fun Home was also nominated for the Best Graphic Album award, and Bechdel was nominated for Best Writer/Artist.^[20]

[edit] Are You My Mother?

Alison Bechdel's second graphic memoir, Are You My Mother?, was released in May 2012.^[21] It focuses on her relationship with her mother.

Later work[link]

Dykes to Watch Out For was suspended in 2008 so that Bechdel can work on another graphic memoir, with the working title Love Life: A Case Study.^[22] It will focus on Bechdel's relationships. Bechdel describes its themes as "the self, subjectivity, desire, the nature of reality, that sort of thing,"^[23] which is a paraphrase of a quote from Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse.

Personal life[link]

Bechdel came out as a lesbian at age 19.^[24] Bechdel's gender and sexual identity are a large part of the core message of her work "The secret subversive goal of my work is to show that women, not just lesbians, are regular human beings."^[25] In February 2004, Bechdel married her partner since 1992, Amy Rubin, in a civil ceremony in San Francisco. However, all same-sex marriage licenses given by the city at that time were subsequently voided by the California Supreme Court. Bechdel and Rubin separated in 2006.^[26]

In November 2006 Bechdel was invited to sit on the Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary.^{[citation needed]}

Bibliography[link]

Collections[link]

• Dykes to Watch Out For (Firebrand Books, 1986, ISBN 0-932379-17-6)
• More Dykes to Watch Out For (Firebrand Books, 1988, ISBN 0-932379-45-1)
• New, Improved! Dykes to Watch Out For (Firebrand Books, 1990, ISBN 0-932379-79-6)
• Dykes to Watch Out For: The Sequel (Firebrand Books, 1992, ISBN 1-56341-008-7)
• Spawn of Dykes to Watch Out For (Firebrand Books, 1993, ISBN 1-56341-039-7)
• Unnatural Dykes to Watch Out For (Firebrand Books, 1995, ISBN 1-56341-067-2)
• Hot, Throbbing Dykes to Watch Out For (Firebrand Books, 1997, ISBN 1-56341-086-9)
• Split-Level Dykes to Watch Out For (Firebrand Books, 1998, ISBN 1-56341-102-4)
• The Indelible Alison Bechdel: Confessions, Comix, and Miscellaneous Dykes to Watch Out For (Firebrand Books, 1998)
• Post-Dykes to Watch Out For (Firebrand Books, 2000, ISBN 1-56341-122-9)
• Dykes and Sundry Other Carbon-Based Life-Forms to Watch Out For (Alyson Publications, 2003, ISBN 1-55583-828-6)
• Invasion of the Dykes to Watch Out For (Alyson Publications, 2005, ISBN 1-55583-833-2)
• The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For (Houghton Mifflin, 2008, ISBN 0-618-96880-6), a compendium containing the vast majority of the strips in all previous collections as well as all 2005-2008 strips not previously published

Graphic memoirs[link]

• Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (Houghton Mifflin, 2006, ISBN 0-618-47794-2)
• Are you my mother?: A Comic Drama (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012, ISBN 0-618-98250-7)

Stories[link]

• "Oppressed Minority Cartoonist" and "The Party" in Juicy Mother edited by Jennifer Camper, Soft Skull Press, 2005 ISBN 1-932360-70-0
• "A Perfect Match" in Juicy Mother 2: How They Met, edited by Jennifer Camper, Manic D Press, 2007, ISBN 978-1-933149-20-2)
• "Vermont" in State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America, edited by Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey, Ecco, 2008, ISBN 978-0-06-147090-5

Interviews[link]

• Interview with Alison Bechdel by Sassafras Lowrey May, 2012
• Interview with Alison Bechdel by Peter Terzian May, 2012

See also[link]

Novels portal

• Women in comics

Footnotes[link]

External links[link]

• Official website
• "Stuck in Vermont 109: Alison Bechdel" © 2008 Eva Sollberger

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Alison Bechdel

Janelle Monáe
Performing at Austin Music Hall in 2009
Background information
Birth name	Janelle Monáe Robinson
Born	(1985-12-01) December 1, 1985 (age 26)
Origin	Kansas City, Kansas US
Genres	Neo-soul, funk, art rock, dance-punk, experimental alternative rock
Occupations	musician
Years active	2003-present
Labels	Bad Boy Records,[1] Atlantic Records[2]
Website	http://www.jmonae.com/

Janelle Monáe (born Janelle Monáe Robinson; December 1, 1985) is an American R&B/soul musician signed to Bad Boy Records and Atlantic Records.

Monáe debuted with a conceptual EP, Metropolis: Suite I (The Chase). The EP failed to make much of a commercial impact, peaking at No. 115 on the Billboard charts in the United States.^[3]

In 2010, Janelle Monáe released her debut studio album, The ArchAndroid (Suites II and III), a concept album sequel to her first EP; it was released by Bad Boy Records. This album received acclaim from critics and gained a Grammy Nomination for Best Contemporary R&B Album. The song "Tightrope" was also nominated for "Best Urban/Alternative Performance"; this album was also more successful commercially officially reaching the No. 17 spot on the Billboard Charts.^[4][5]

In March 2012, "We Are Young", the song by the band Fun on which Monáe makes a guest appearance, reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, her first appearance in the US Top 10.

Biography[link]

Early life and career[link]

Monáe was born Janelle Monáe Robinson in Kansas City, Kansas, where she spent her early life; Monáe has stated that the fictional character of Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz has been one of her musical influences. She has told reporters that she has dreamed of being a singer and a performer since she was very young.^[6] Monáe moved from Kansas City, Kansas to New York to study drama at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy.

She attended a Performing Arts School called Freedom Theatre, which is the oldest African-American theatre in Philadelphia. After moving to Atlanta, Georgia, where she met OutKast's Big Boi, Monáe founded the Wondaland Arts Society with like-minded young artists and made appearances on Idlewild, where she is featured on the songs "Call the Law" and "In Your Dreams". Big Boi told his friend Sean Combs about Monáe, whom he had not heard of before. Combs promptly visited her MySpace page, and according to Bad Boy Records' A&R Daniel 'Skid' Mitchell in an interview with HitQuarters, the label boss loved it straight away, "[He] loved her look, loved that you couldn’t see her body, loved the way she was dancing, and just loved the vibe. He felt like she has something that was different - something new and fresh."^[7] Monáe signed to Bad Boy in 2006. The label's chief role was in facilitating her exposure on a much broader scale rather than developing the artist and her music, because in the words of Mitchell, "She was already moving, she already had her records - she had a self-contained movement." Combs and Big Boi wanted to take their time and build her profile organically and allow the music to grow rather than put out "A hot single which everyone jumps on, and then they fade because it's just something of the moment."^[7]

[edit] 2007-10: Metropolis - The Chase Suite and The ArchAndroid (Suites II and III)

Monáe and her band performing at Sudoeste Festival 2011.

In 2007, Monáe released her first solo work, titled Metropolis. It was originally conceived as a concept album in four parts, or "suites", which were to be released through her website and mp3 download sites. After the release of the first part of the series, Metropolis: Suite I (The Chase) in mid-2007, these plans were altered following her signing with Sean "Diddy" Combs's label, Bad Boy Records, later in the year. The label gave an official and physical release to the first "suite" in August 2008, which was retitled Metropolis: The Chase Suite (Special Edition) and included two new tracks. The EP was generally well-received by critics, garnering Monáe a 2009 Grammy nomination in the Best Urban/Alternative Performance for her single "Many Moons",^[8] festival appearances and opening slots for the indie pop band Of Montreal. Monáe also toured as the opening act for band No Doubt on their summer 2009 tour.^[9] Her single "Open Happiness" was featured in the 2009 season finale of American Idol.^[10] Monáe told MTV about her concept for her new album and also discussed her alter-ego named Cindi Mayweather, she said:

"Cindi is an android and I love speaking about the android because they are the new “other�. People are afraid of the other and I believe we’re going to live in a world with androids because of technology and the way it advances. The first album she was running because she had fallen in love with a human and she was being disassembled for that."^[11]

In a November 2009 interview, Monáe revealed the title and concept behind her album, The ArchAndroid. The album was released on May 18, 2010. The second and third suites of Metropolis are combined into this full-length release, in which Monáe's alter-ego, Cindi Mayweather—also the protagonist of Metropolis: The Chase Suite— becomes a messianic figure to the android community of Metropolis.^[12] Monáe noted that she plans to shoot a video for each song on The ArchAndroid and create both a movie and graphic novel based on the album.^[13] The Metropolis concept series draws inspiration from a wide range of musical, cinematic and other sources, ranging from Alfred Hitchcock to Debussy to Philip K. Dick. However, the series puts Fritz Lang's 1927 silent film Metropolis, which Monáe referred to as "the godfather of science-fiction movies," in special regard.^[14][15] Aside from sharing a name, they also share visual styles (the cover for The ArchAndroid is inspired by the iconic poster for Metropolis), conceptual themes and political goals, using expressionistic future scenarios to examine and explode contemporary ideas of prejudice and class. Both also include a performing female android, though to very different effect. Where Metropolis android Maria is the evil, havoc-sowing double of the messianic figure to the city's strictly segregated working class, Monáe's messianic android muse Cindi Mayweather represents an interpretation of androids as that segregated minority, which Monáe describes as "... the Other. And I feel like all of us, whether in the majority or the minority, felt like the Other at some point."^[14][16]

Monáe received the Vanguard Award from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers at the Rhythm & Soul Music Awards in 2010.^[17] Monáe covered Charlie Chaplin's Smile on Billboard.com in June 2010. In an NPR interview in September 2010, Monae stated that she is a believer in, and a proponent of time travel. Monáe performed "Tightrope" during the second elimination episode of the 11th Season of Dancing with the Stars on September 28, 2010.^[18] Monáe performed at the 53rd Annual Grammy Awards in 2011 alongside artists Bruno Mars and B.o.B; Monáe performed the synth section of B.o.B's song "Nothin' On You" and she then performed her track "Cold War" with B.o.B on the guitar and Mars on the drums. Her performance received a standing ovation.^[19]

Her single "Tightrope" was featured on the American Idols LIVE! Tour 2011, performed by Pia Toscano, Haley Reinhart, Naima Adedapo, and Thia Megia.

[edit] 2011-present: re-release of ArchAndroid, new album and other projects

Monáe tweeted that she is planning on releasing an instrumental version of The ArchAndroid.^[20] In an interview, Monáe stated that she plans to release two albums in 2012.^[21] In another interview with Forbes, Monáe also said that she plans to release an ArchAndroid inspired film.^[22] She will join the Red Hot Chili Peppers as a support act on part of their "I'm With You" tour.

Monàe was featured in Fun's hit single, "We Are Young", and also performed an acoustic version of the song with lead singer of Fun, Nate Ruess.

Artistry[link]

Musical styles and influences[link]

The Telegraph released their interview with Monáe talking about her first studio album where they said "I begin to worry for a moment that Monáe may not just be a humourless science-fiction nerd, but actually an android herself, created in a laboratory as a super-musical cross between James Brown, Judy Garland, Andre 3000 and Steve Jobs, invented to test the desperate incredulity of music journalists". They also compared Monáe to artists such as Annie Lennox and Lauryn Hill.^[23] Her musical styles have been described as "a soaring orchestral trip enlivened with blockbuster vocals, mysterious imagery and notes of Sixties pop and jazz".^[24] The Guardian have noted some of her influences as: Michael Jackson, Prince, OutKast, Erykah Badu, Beyonce, James Brown, Grace Jones, Stevie Wonder, David Bowie, Jimi Hendrix, Bernard Herrmann, Funkadelic and the Incredible String Band.^[25] Monáe has stated that she has an alter-ego named Cindi Mayweather who according to Monáe is from the year 2719.^[26] In her first EP she gave her alter-ego a back-story stating that she is on the run after breaking the law in her home town of Metropolis after falling in love with a human named Anthony Greendown. Monáe explained about Cindi, saying "The Archandroid, Cindi, is the mediator, between the mind and the hand. She's the mediator between the haves and the have-nots, the oppressed and the oppressor. She's like the Archangel in the Bible, and what Neo represents to the Matrix."^[27]

Public image[link]

Monáe has gained a signature clothing style of wearing a Tuxedo wardrobe and she said on the matter to Honey Magazine "I bathe in it, I swim in it, and I could be buried in it. A tux is such a standard uniform, it’s so classy and it’s a lifestyle I enjoy. The tux keeps me balanced. I look at myself as a canvas. I don’t want to cloud myself with too many colors or I’ll go crazy. It’s an experiment I’m doing. I think I want to be in the Guinness Book of World Records."^[28] In Monáe's concerts she has been noted to hand out her Ten Droid Commandments which encourages her fans to be individuals.^[27] The Telegraph also commented on her image as an artist saying "Sitting in a grey, airless record company office, this slight, stiff young woman delivers her speech in slow, deliberate tones, utterly expressionless. Dressed in her trademark starched shirt and tuxedo, hair immaculately coiffed, Monáe’s face is an opaque mask of perfection: all silken smooth skin, button nose and glassy brown eyes."^[23] She has described her Tuxedos as being a uniform for her career and she has stated that she wears them when she is working.^[27] She also featured in the "Style 100" of InStyle Magazine.^[29]

Discography[link]

Studio albums[link]

Extended plays[link]

Singles[link]

Featured singles[link]