Works and Awards

Post by Yussef A

Alison Bechdel’s first piece of work was Dykes to Watch Out For which she started writing and illustrating in 1983. It was a notable comic strip that took little time to become a main feature in news magazines that covered gay topics. Dykes to Watch Out For ran for 25 years until Alison decided to stop working on it, and instead publish it on the Internet where it gained a lot of popularity. One specific strip called “The Rule” is what actually created the Bechdel Test, which was a test on gender inequality. So, if a movie or story has a minimum of two women talking about anything other than men, then it passes the Bechdel test (Ray, 2019, para.3).
(Figure 1. Cover of Dykes to Watch Out For by A.Bechdel, 1983 on the right)



One of Alison's most notable works was definitely the graphic memoir Fun Home which was published in 2006 and was listed as one of the ten best books of 2006 by Time Magazine. It was a coming-of-age story that was focused on the relationship between Alison who was discovering her own sexuality and her father who had secrets about his sexuality. Also, the making of Fun Home helped reward Alison with the Eisner Award for best reality-based work (Ray, 2019, para. 4). What made this piece of work interesting was not only the success made from the memoir itself but also the fact that it was transformed into a stage musical by Lisa Kron and Jeanine Tesori who made the book and musical work for it respectively. They had a fair amount of achievements at the 2015 Tony Awards when they received awards for best musical, best direction, best actor, best score, and best book (Ray, 2019, para. 4).

                                                            (Figure 2. Cover of Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by A.Bechdel, 2006)



Lastly, Alison published another graphic memoir called Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama in May 2012 that goes more in-depth on the relationship between Alison and her mother. This is definitely a good memoir to read if you found Fun Home interesting and would like to know more about Alison's relationship with her mother as it wasn't detailed as much in Fun Home since it was more about her father.
(Figure 3. Cover of Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama by A.Bechdel, 2012 on the right)

In addition to the awards mentioned earlier, Alison has received a number of other awards such as the Israel Fishman Non-Fiction Award in 2007 (Stonewall Book Awards), Guggenheim Fellowship & The Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement from Publishing Triangle in 2012, The International Forum for Psychoanalytic Educator Award in 2013, A MacArthur Fellowship (Genius Grant) & Lambda Board of Trustees Award for Excellence in Literature in 2014, and The Erikson Institute Prize for Excellence in Mental Health Media in 2015.
("Alison Bechdel," n.d.)

Here's a link to "The Tony Awards" YouTube channel showing a clip of Fun Home as a musical.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Qlagsg5LT8

Post created by Yussef

References

Bechdel, A. (1983). Cover of Dykes to Watch Out For [Drawing]. 

Bechdel, A. (2006). Cover of Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic [Drawing]. 

Bechdel, A. (2012). Cover of Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama [Drawing]. 

Ray, M. (2019). Alison Bechdel. Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alison-Bechdel

[The Tony Awards]. (2015, May 5). 2015 Tony Awards Show Clip: Fun Home [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Qlagsg5LT8

Wikipedia contributors. (2019, November 3). Alison Bechdel. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 21:28, November 20, 2019, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Alison_Bechdel&oldid=924320669