old reading responses and Fun Home criticisms

Remember to bring reading responses 8 and 9 (if you did them) on Monday. Don't rewrite them; just turn in the originals again. You won't be given new points for them or anything, but I have a plan for them.

Also, on Monday I want to go through the answers to the questions we went over last Wednesday at the end of class. Also, I want to address some of the criticisms leveled at Fun Home. Here are the three most common ones I've seen:

• The literary references in Fun Home are distracting and add nothing to the narrative. In fact, they only seem to be there as a way to make the "comic book" seem more respectable.
• The pictures don't do much in Fun Home. There is really no reason for the book to be a graphic novel. It would have worked just as well as a text-only autobiography.
• In Fun Home, Alison Bechdel confirms negative homosexual stereotypes. For instance, the story portrays the stereotype that all gay men are interested in young boys. It also implies the old idea that lesbianism and feminism are one and the same.