Literacy, Vocabulary and Sexuality in Fun Home

Alison Bechdel's autobiographical graphic novel Fun Home is one of the more unusual ones I've had the pleasure of reading (right up there with the similarly scholarly Asterios Polyp by David Mazuchelli and the utterly bonkers Grant Morrison funnybook The Filth), owing in no small part to her detached narration and an erudite vocabulary the likes of which I'd wager few non-English major types would find appealing instead of irritating. The upper-level syntax Bechdel employs is not just there to make her prose seem pretentious, however; it serves a rhetorical purpose as well. By linking the discovery of her non-heteronormative sexuality with the development of her literacy and vocabulary, Bechdel comments upon the challenges and joys she experiences through both processes and suggests that, in the mind of a highly literate person, personal growth and the development of literacy are intimately linked.

Part of what sets Fun Home apart from many graphic novels is in its visual elements. While the pictures are never dominated by the type on the page, Bechdel de-emphasizes the art in individual panels by (for the most part) sticking to a 3-panel widescreen design that causes the reader to focus on the words that surround them and the speech bubbles within. This emphasis on the textual elements of the novel's design work to reinforce the themes of the power of literacy on an almost subconscious level- the reader places higher value on the text of this *graphic* novel even before the theme is introduced through the plot.

Bechdel explores her connection between words and sex primarily in Chapter 5 of Fun Home. It begins with the adult Alison looking up the word "queer" in the dictionary and remarking about how her father's death fit with all of the word's many diverse definitions, then describes her parents' marriage using different literary allusions, including The Taming of the Shrew and the works of Proust. Bechdel's use of literature and vocabulary in these parts of the chapter illustrate how a highly literate person grows to view their own life in a way that one could consider an example of intertextuality- relating various works not just to each other but to personal experiences as well.

Later on in the chapter Bechdel recounts how she discovered her sexual identity at nineteen, revealing that books were almost solely responsible for her revelation, which she refers to as "not of the flesh, but of the mind." The author describes not being surprised by the idea that it was reading and not something more sensual that sparked her realization, but rather her "bookish upbringing." By juxtaposing this sequence with earlier ones regarding her parents' relationship and a later one about the ways her father "cultivated" younger men for his own desires, Bechdel illustrates the importance of literacy not just to her own life, but to her parents' as well.