Vermont cartoonist Alison Bechdel has groomed a respectable counter-culture career with her syndicated comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For, which she began in 1983. Bechdel is just now garnering mainstream attention with her memoir, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, published by Houghton Mifflin. The book recounts her coming-of-age in rural Pennsylvania: a story that involves a closeted gay father, her own coming-out as a lesbian in college, and her belief that her father’s death may have been a suicide.
While written in comic-book form, Fun Home is filled with allusions to the great fictional works of James Joyce and Henry James, among others, as Bechdel respools the threads of familial bonds that make up her personal history.
Bechdel will be appearing at Bear Pond Books in Montpelier Tuesday, July 11 at 7 and at the Peace and Justice Center in Burlington, Friday, July 14 at 7.