'Whatever Else May Be Going On:' Sharing Books in Bechdel's Fun Home. Issue 4 (2nd October 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Miller, Michelle
• Is Part Of: Changing English. Volume 26:Issue 4(2019)
• Page Start: 405
• Page End: 414
• Publication Date: 2019-10-02
• Subjects: Fun Home -- Alison Bechdel -- queer family -- development -- literature -- graphic memoir; English literature -- Study and teaching -- Periodicals; English language -- Study and teaching -- Periodicals; 410
• DOI: 10.1080/1358684X.2019.1654852
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1358-684X

Abstract

ABSTRACT: In Fun Home, Alison Bechdel recounts a version of her family's history through moments of meaningful textual exchange. This paper takes up one such moment, when Alison's father Bruce offers his daughter a queer text, which she uses both to understand her own sexuality and to broach the the queer connection she has just learned they have. I read this exchange as a case study for considering what happens when we share our meaningful books with others. Here I map the way literary works function in this text both developmentally, following Grumet's reading of Winnicott, and erotically, following Bechdel's own narration. I read the act of sharing books as an act of love that helps build the world worth noticing, core relationships, and individual identities, reading too how literature functions as 'currency' in the difficult father-daughter relationship at hand in this graphic memoir.