Reading Response 9

Reading Response 9- after chapter 4 of Fun Home

Keeping in mind what you have read of Fun Home so far, respond to one of the prompts below. Please use specific evidence from the book to support your response.

1. Compare and contrast how Alison Bechdel’s father uses books in his life to how Bechdel as a young college student does. How do books relate to their identities? To their sexual identities?

2. What assets does Alison Bechdel have that help support her coming out as a lesbian? What are her obstacles?

3. On page 85, Bechdel claims that her father prefers “fiction to reality.” How does this relate to the fact that Bechdel uses so many other stories– Daedalus and Icarus, Camus, The Great Gatsby, etc.– to understand her father?

4. On page 104, Bechdel mentions the Stonewall Riots. Do some research about this. Why is it significant that Bechdel and her father are in New York just weeks after the Stonewall Riots?

5. Choose a scene from the book and compare the narration with the monstration. What relationship do these share? In other words, what do the images show in comparison to what the words explain and how do the two work together in the scene to create meaning? Consider using McCloud.

6. Choose your own focus for analysis

Due Thursday November 20th.