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Comics and exercising: the perfect combination

The Secret to Superhuman Strength by Alison Bechdel

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I saw The Secret to Superhuman Strength (2021) by Alison Bechdel on NPR’s Best Books List and was immediately intrigued. I’d already read the graphic memoir, Fun House, by Bechdel, which I enjoyed, but this one seemed right up my alley. I have a hard time describing Bechdel’s graphic memoirs because they’re such an interesting mix of genres. You have the cartoon element, the deeply personal stories, and the mix of literature review and biography thrown in as well. In Superhuman Strength, Bechdel discusses a number of writers, including Ralph Waldo […]

A Brilliant Graphic Memoir

Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

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I moved to San Francisco from New York in 1990. One of the ways I fell in love with the City was by voraciously reading the newspapers. There were two regular newspapers, one a morning edition and one that was published in the afternoon. There were also free papers like The Bay Guardian, similar to the Village Voice in NY. In one of the free papers–I can’t remember which now–there was a cartoon Dykes to Watch Out For, drawn by Alison Bechdel. It was funny […]

The journey we take to get where we are going

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel

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My journey to Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel was, to say was odd, but normal for me. I knew of Bechdel’s Dykes to Watch Out for series. I have the collection on my TBR list. And I knew that they had this book when it came out. The store I work at hosted an event. (July 2018 to be exact) I was interested in but forgot (long story why) to attend. Flash forward to about two months ago when I was speaking […]

What Happens When Family Secrets Go Unspoken

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Bechdel, Alison

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Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel My rating: 4 of 5 stars Alison Bechdel’s “Fun Home” is both biography and autobiography. On the one hand we focus a lot on her father and how his life largely shapes and sometimes mirrors her own. Yet, it’s also how his life impacts her and how she’s the woman she is when the book closes during her college years. Regardless of how you’d categorize this book it doesn’t diminish the power of how our parents influence […]

Libidinal. Manic. Martyred.

Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

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I honestly didn’t know what the book was about as I opened it, but its reputation precedes it, and I’ve read Are You My Mother?  so really I should have guessed. The book details Alison Bechdel’s relationship with her father, an unsatisfied 12th grade English teacher who loved gardening, Albert Camus, borderline (or not so borderline) trysts with young men, and books. The narrator does not know about the young men until much later. What comes next though is the eccentricities of her father, the spelling […]

“I still found literary criticism to be a suspect activity.”

Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

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I’d heard of Alison Bechdel from the Bechdel test, but I wasn’t at all familiar with her or her work. I picked up Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (2006) because it was on my 50 Books Every Woman Should Read Before She Turns 40 List. I think I’ve only read one other graphic novel (maybe), but I appreciate being forced out of my comfort zone every now and then. Although it hasn’t changed my preference for traditional writing and the pictures in my head, Fun Home was worth reading. Fun Home is […]



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