My mother would call me upset - he had just thrown a painting down the stairs. On what led Bechdel to believe her father, who died after being hit by a truck, may have committed suicideīechdel: That my mother had asked for a divorce that my father had been behaving so erratically. That was my job, a little bit to my family's horror at first, but they all got used to it eventually. I've been all about being out and open about being a lesbian since I came out in 1980, and it has been my career - I wrote this lesbian comic strip for many, many years. I had this great opportunity because of the moment, the generational moment, when I came out. I didn't have any long period of struggle. I was spellbound by this book and as I was reading it, I had this simultaneous realization that, "Oh my God, I am one of these people in this book," and also that it was OK. It was a book about a documentary film that had been made which was interviews with a whole bunch of gay men and lesbians. I had this very formative moment: I was browsing in my college bookstore and I found this book called Word Is Out. So Jeanine said we need to write a song about this panel and I said, "We can't because there's not going to be a way to do it that people won't laugh at that character and I couldn't bear it." And Jeanine said, "We have to," and then I said "OK," because I do what Jeanine tells me.īechdel: I came out by reading books, not by having actual experiences with other people. I was very worried about how we would put this story and that character and specifically that moment onstage without triggering that ridicule, that sort of reflexive response. In mainstream culture, the way that it has often been expressed is as a stock character of ridicule. really worried about doing well was portraying butchness and portraying exactly what is meant by that and what is felt in that, because I think if you live inside of the world and the community where that gender expression has meaning, it's completely clear, but if you don't, it's very difficult to grasp. On writing " Ring of Keys," a song about the first time Bechdel saw a butch lesbian And I knew that that was completely unacceptable. In that moment, I recognized that woman: I identified with her I wanted her I wanted to be her. My father saw me looking at this woman and he whipped his head around and said, "Is that how you want to look?" And there was so much going in that exchange. a much larger city than where we lived, and we were having lunch in a diner and this woman came in - this big, burly woman with short hair and men's clothes - and I was spellbound. On seeing a butch lesbian for the first time when she was about 9 years oldīechdel: We were in Philadelphia. I felt like I was living some kind of lie. But mostly when I did have to knuckle under and dress up for a party or something, it just felt terrible. And sometimes I would win, which testifies to the strength of that feeling in me. It's like one of the first things I remember is wanting to wear boys' clothes and fighting with my dad about it. On Bechdel's father making her wear feminine clothingīechdel: That struggle came so early in my life.
It was much more emotional than I had been anticipating."įun Home lyricist Lisa Kron and composer Jeanine Tesori (whom you can hear in the audio link above) join Bechdel in a conversation about the play. I was not at all prepared to hear the music. Fun Home has since been turned into a Broadway play, which recently won five Tony Awards, including the award for best musical.īechdel says seeing her life story put to music was a visceral experience: "I was kind of blown away. In 2006, Bechdel's "healing" took the form of a graphic novel called Fun Home, in which she details her own coming out and grapples with her father's death, which she suspects may have been a suicide. In a way, that was all my way of healing myself."
"I threw myself into the gay community, into this life as a lesbian cartoonist, deciding I was going to be a professional lesbian. "In many ways my life, my professional career has been a reaction to my father's life, his life of secrecy," Bechdel tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. It was a decision she made consciously as a reaction to her father, who was gay and closeted, and who died four months after Bechdel came out. Since coming out as a lesbian in 1980 at the age of 19, graphic novelist Alison Bechdel has made it a point to be open about her sexuality.