The Ways I Personally Related to Fun Home

Post by Sarah H

Alison Bechdel has written a deeply personal account of her childhood in Beech Creek, Pennsylvania. Alison’s complicated relationships with her family, specifically with her father was at the forefront of her coming-of-age story.

So, how does someone who has lived completely different experiences, relate to someone else’s life story? My childhood was certainly different from Alison’s, and yet, there are many details in her memoir that I find retable. Similarly to Alison, I was raised in a small rural community (in south-western Ontario) with a population of only several hundred people. My parents both grew up within several miles of my childhood home, and my father’s home farm, where he was born and grew up, was less than 2 miles away from our farm. Like Alison’s father, my dad grew up, lived, and died in the community in which he was born. Additionally, I was a similar age to Alison when my father suddenly died, although my father died of a heart attack. My father is buried in the local cemetery in which 5 generations of my mother’s and father’s family members are buried. The cemetery looks not unlike the small cemetery in Beech Creek, where Alison's father is buried.

This is where our stories diverge. My father, though a man of few words, was a kind, warm, and loving father, and a faithful and loving husband. My father was not a perfect man, but he was a good man. My dad did not have a secret life. While reading the memoir, I wondered what it must have felt like for Alison to attend her father’s funeral, knowing that much of Bruce’s life was spent keeping the secret of his sexuality and his sexual affairs. I grew up in a tiny community in which everyone knows everyone else’s business. The gossip and judgemental opinions of a small community cannot be dismissed lightly; these opinions unquestionably affect a person’s standing in their community.

As a child, I remember hearing stories of extra-marital affairs, stories of child and spousal abuse, and other unacceptable behaviours by community members. In a church-going Christian community, engaging in any of this behaviour did not please the community at large, although many digressions were swept under the rug; they were known privately, but not spoken of publicly. I can only imagine the amount of energy it must have taken Bruce to hide his homosexuality and his affairs with teenage boys. Keeping this secret was imperative, especially since this information becoming public would also bring shame to his entire extended family, who also live in the community. Having grown up in a small town, this is something that I can understand.

The town of Alison Bechdel’s childhood is the community of a small town that I recognize. Alison grew up in the 1970s, and although I grew up in the late 80s and 90s, the provincial views of my town were similarly small-minded. The world has opened up in the past 2 decades, and people are far more open to diversity in my childhood community.

Alison said, in an article in the Guardian with Rachel Cooke (2017) that she was nervous when she went back to her home town when Fun Home the Musical was being workshopped. “I felt anxious, like, oh my God, I’m going to see all these people and they’re going to be pissed off with me. Because there were people in my hometown who did not think Fun Home was a good thing. They thought it dishonoured my family.” So how did it go? Even now, she sounds amazed. “There was this great warmth that I just hadn’t expected. I had thought I was going back to 1977, but the place has changed. It has… evolved.’” (Bechdel, 2014, as qtd. In Cooke, 2014).

This is a statement that I can relate to as well, I have also witnessed the evolution of my small town. I found Fun Home to be a compelling and deeply personal account of Alison’s childhood, and although my childhood experiences were quite different, I can relate to many aspects of her story.

Sources Consulted

Cooke, R. (2017, November 5). Fun Home creator Alison Bechdel on turning a tragic childhood into a hit musical. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/nov/05/alison-bechdel-interview-cartoonist-fun-home.

Post Created By Sarah H