Who is she?
Born in 1960, Alison Bechdel grew up in a period of major change in the United States. The youth of the 1970s were fighting for individuality and self-expression, a fight that Alison gladly joined. Deviating drastically from the environment in which she was raised, Alison became a proud lesbian cartoonist.
What has she written?
Alison's writing career began her comic strip, Dykes To Watch Out For, became a countercultural institution among lesbians and discerning non-lesbians all over the planet. During its life (1983-2008) it appeared in The New Yorker, Slate, McSweeney’s, The New York Times Book Review, Granta, & more.
In 2006 Alison came out with a graphic memoir, Fun Home, which, of course, you have read and know all about.
In 2012 Alison wrote another graphic memoir about her relationship with her mother titled Are You My Mother? In this graphic memoir, she portrays her mother in a much colder light, describing her lifelong struggle to find a warm mother figure elsewhere.
Is she a trustworthy Narrator?
As with any memoir, the story Alison tells in Fun Home is her truth. Her truth belongs to no one else, in fact, her mother has insisted over the years that Alison got many things wrong. When asked if her mother ever saw the musical Alison said, "I think she didn’t do it. I think it was just too… it wasn’t her story. She was always clear that there was something I didn’t get right. Who wants to see themselves turned into a character in someone else’s drama?"
Alison does not presume to speak for her family. Even within the book and musical Alison says she is searching for the truth, whatever it might be. As a child she suffered from OCD, obsessing over documenting the truth.
Despite Alison's attempt at documenting the truth, her sister-in-law, Leanne Keefer Bechdel, passionately advocates that Bruce did not commit suicide. Leanne wrote a memorial for Bruce in which her rhetoric suggests harbored resentment toward the wide acceptance of Fun Home's story.
It's important to remember that Fun Home is Alison's truth, whether or not Bruce actually killed himself. In the song 'Telephone Wire', Alison is trying to find closure with her father, but when someone is dead, mutual closure is impossible. Whatever peace Alison finds, it will be one-sided, and through her graphic memoir, Alison landed on this truth.
The Bechdel Test
We can’t talk about Alison Bechdel without talking about the Bechdel test. In 1985, a strip of Alison’s comic, Dykes to Watch Out For, included a conversation in which one of her characters described three rules a movie had to follow in order for her to be willing to see it. Alison credits these rules to her real-life friend Liz Wallace. These three rules are now popularly known as the Bechdel Test, a method of evaluating media based on its portrayal of women. In recent years it has become increasingly more common, and some critics even include a film’s Bechdel Test pass or fail in their review. bechdeltest.com is a user-run web database of films and which of the rules they follow.
The Bechdel Test’s three rules are that a work must include (1) at least two female characters who (2) have a conversation with each other (3) about something other than a man. All three criteria must be met for the piece to pass. Many people now add a fourth criterion that the two women must have names.