Teaching 'Fun Home'

Alison Bechdel’s graphic memoir Fun Home has received critical raves. A musical adaptation has become a Broadway smash. Despite these successes, some students in Duke University’s incoming class refused to read Fun Home when it was placed on their recommended summer reading list. Citing the book’s acceptance of lesbian identity, these students said they believe that exposing themselves to Bechdel’s story will violate their Christian morals.

As a professor who has taught Fun Home in his classes for years, I would advise these students to rethink their positions. Most of my students who have engaged with Fun Home find many connections to Bechdel’s autobiography and are moved by it. Although her story may be unfamiliar, her work has much to offer, both emotionally and educationally.

Fun Home is on the syllabus of a course titled the Common Intellectual Experience (CIE) at Ursinus College in Pennsylvania, where I teach. All our first-year students take the course simultaneously, grouped into classes of approximately 16, each group with a different professor. They read the same books at the same time, write papers with the same deadlines and so on. The course provides students the opportunity to explore the human experience from a myriad of perspectives. In their first semester, they read work by authors such as Plato, Galileo and Descartes. Students ponder and discuss the course’s three main questions from the perspectives of these different authors: (1) What does it mean to be human? (2) What is the universe and how do we fit into it? (3) How should we live our lives? The college is rightly proud of this course, as it is a fine example of a liberal arts education, and I am happy to be a participant in it.

Fun Home is the first text of the second semester, a semester that also includes Freud, Marx and the Declaration of Independence. Bechdel’s book focuses on the author’s coming to terms with being a lesbian, dealing with the revelation of her father’s homosexuality and discovering the true nature of their “entwined stories.” It gives the second semester of the course a contemporary start and allows the students to view the CIE questions in fresh ways. The course is discussion based and students are encouraged to debate opposing viewpoints respectfully, to shape reasoned arguments with strong points of view and to learn from diversity of opinion. Fun Home provides excellent material for the students to talk about themes of identity, family, home and growing up.

Fun Home, as a college text, has experienced controversy even before the Duke students’ rejection. Last year, the South Carolina House of Representatives voted to cut funding to the College of Charleston because of its plan to place Bechdel’s book on a freshmen recommended reading list. State Representative Garry R. Smith said he believes that the memoir is inappropriate for students because it “graphically shows lesbian acts” and is “promoting the gay and lesbian lifestyle.”

I am proud that Ursinus chose Fun Home as a central text for our common course and that we did not shy away from it because of its controversial history in academia. In my experience, working with the text in the classroom has been educative and productive. The character of Alison, as presented in Bechdel’s witty and distinctive illustrations, starts as naïve and feeling limited. As she matures, she forges her identity, diverges from her parents and makes her mark in the world. Our 18-year-old students grapple with similar issues. They easily relate to Alison in a variety of ways. Many of the students at Ursinus come from small communities in Pennsylvania, just like Alison Bechdel. They read about a young woman whose world is increasingly becoming wider and more varied at just the moment when the same is happening to them. The author’s themes resonate with all the students regardless of their sexuality, religion or cultural background. Bechdel is a canny writer whose specific experiences translate well to a universal audience.

I have prepared myself each semester for student objections. There is a controversial panel in the book which depicts an intimate sexual moment from Bechdel’s college days. Instead of ignoring it, I have met the subject head-on and asked my students, “Do you believe, in context, that this illustration is pornographic?” In the multiple times I have raised this question, not one student has been offended by the image. These are 18-year-olds. Burgeoning sexuality is nothing new to them. Bechdel shares her story from a young person’s perspective and the students easily relate to her personal sexual explorations.

If students in my class were to refuse to read the book altogether, I would urge them to reconsider. Yes, they may find the story alien and opposed to their morality, but, as college students, they should embrace these differing views. Exposure will help them to understand the world better and to strengthen their own opinions. As a college community, we should not shy away from difficult or complex points of view. Ursinus’s CIE students have read sections of Hitler’s Mein Kampf, objectionable by anyone’s standards. Being shielded from offensive or outrageous material does not make it disappear. If students want to navigate the world after graduation, they need to expose themselves to the variety of human experience while in the safety of their college campus.

Objectors to Fun Home are being reductive when they focus solely on the memoir’s frank presentation of sexuality. Fun Home is so much more. In the right atmosphere, this book allows young people to open up about their own lives and to share their struggles. What does it mean to be human? How should we live our lives? These questions go from the abstract to the relevant when our CIE students discuss Fun Home in the classroom.

Alison Bechdel’s story will resonate with anyone who is grown up or is growing up. It is my sincere hope that the controversies surrounding the book will not stop it from being included on college reading lists. As our Ursinus students know, Bechdel is a wise teacher with much to teach all of us.