Velshi Banned Book Club: “Fun Home” by Alison Bechdel
Video (9:53): MSNBC interviwes author and lesbian cartoonist Alison Bechdel about her graphic novel Fun Home (2006). The interview took place in May 2025.
Fun Home
Written in 2006, “Fun Home” chronicles Alison Bechdel’s upbringing in rural Pennsylvania. “Fun Home” is told in a non-linear way: the same incidents are revisited as the reader gathers more information, nuance, and detail. While “Fun Home” is ultimately an examination of Bechdel’s family’s dynamics, mental health, abuse, and sexual identity, Bechdel’s relationship with her father is central. Beyond “Fun Home”, her body of work is culturally foundational – it centered lesbians and the LGBTQ+ community in ways that simply had not been done before. Her weekly comic strip, which ran from 1983 to 2008, was nothing short of seminal and beloved. She also created the “Bechdel Test”, which is a measure of representation of women in film, literature and other works. – MSNBC
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic
by Alison Bechdel
Publisher: Mariner Books Classics
Publication date: June 5, 2007
Edition: Reprint
Language: English
Print length: 232 pages
ISBN-10: 0618871713
ISBN-13: 978-0618871711
Item Weight: 14.4 ounces
Reading age: 15 years and up
Dimensions: 6 x 0.67 x 9 inches
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