The quality of writing in “Fun Home” and “Are You My Mother” is really excellent, and the drawing is, too. I have to admit that while I was never a fan of Bechdel’s previous long running strip “Dykes To Watch Out For” - I was glad it existed, and knew people who LOVED that strip.
I thought “Fun Home” was a very analytical and moving book, that operates on many simultaneous levels. “Fun Home” is a book that will be historically important for many questioning/LBGTI, etc. youth. This is also a book for straight people - especially young college students - who would never otherwise read a “gay” book. And for people who think comics are a lesser art form. And for people who scoff at autobiography.
I wish the South Carolina legislature would be forced to READ this book(and then pass a written exam to prove they actually read it), before they would be allowed to confiscate any budget for books.
This book is about Bechdel’s sexuality - and her father’s - and her mother’s - but it is also about growing up as a girl, living in a small town, having a teacher as a parent, having family involved in the funeral home business, going against the grain and living in a fabulously restored victorian house, her parent’s marriage, frustrated and thwarted adult ambition, questions around suicide - and storytelling, memory and drawing. It is no more about sexuality than say, Art Speigelman’s “MAUS” in which straight people have troubled romances, marriage, children and separation during WW2. In MAUS, Jewish identity under siege is also a central theme, as well as efforts to deny, conceal this identity to “pass” to survive. Which parallels some of the issues in “Fun Home”.
How can members of a legislature be so dumb ? You’d think they would have to pass a reading comprehension test to get the job ?
I disagree vehemently. One might as well say that Crane’s “The Open Boat” has suggestions of atheism due to Nature’s indifference to the plight of the story’s protagonists. Or, even better, maybe Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse-five” should be banned from teaching because it depicts sex, or can be read as a critique of war-making?
Now that I think about it, gosh, I’m seeing the light–all public schools should receive an approved list of reading materials from the government or the local legislature because we wouldn’t want folks to get the wrong ideas. Clearly, there is but one system available to us: “Responsibility to superiors, authority toward inferiors.” Help us lift ourselves from the intellectual muck, South Carolina! Show us how we can prosper at your level, especially without Teh Gayz!!
This, actually. I really believe that this is related to the drive to privatize everything. Isn’t this why religiously tinged libertarians have managed to wrangle at least partial control of the GOP?
Short-term: Donate to restore the lost funds to Charleston.
Medium-term: Urge the SC state legislature to restore funds when the state budget is reviewed as a whole on March 10th.
Long-term, and perhaps most importantly: Support and donate to a viable candidate to oppose Garry Smith in the next election. Booting his dumb ass out the door is the best revenge.
I assigned “Are You My Mother?” for a doctoral-level class in Human Development that I taught a couple of years ago, because it dovetailed so nicely with some of our readings on theories of psychological development.
This sounds like a recipe for politicians launching even MORE cuts on the justification that “see, we don’t even NEED to fund them, others will pick up the slack!”
What we need to do is make this hurt for the sort of people who pull this shit. Fund their oppositions election campaigns and stuff. (and keep things running until they can be replaced, that too of course)
There are oral histories that were recorded in the southern US states in 1920’s and 30’s, with people in their 80’s who had been slaves in the south (See the book “My Folks Don’t Want Me To Talk About Slavery”). Their experiences varied greatly, but without exception, every single one of them was forbidden to learn to read ! And if it seemed like they had learned even the most basic reading comprehension, they were severely beaten, and even sold.
Despite this, there were a few subversives who taught themselves to read.
A few months ago I heard a woman being interviewed on the radio, on some NPR program, talking about her book “Fun Home” and dysfunctional childhood and struggles to find her identity. Interesting and moving discussion. I had turned on the radio randomly in the middle of the program (as one does with car radios); they got to the Q&A and somebody asked her about the Bechdel test, and the interviewee turned out to be Alison Bechdel. (BTW, she says the test didn’t originate with her - it was a line she borrowed from a friend, and it wasn’t meant to be a yardstick applied to everything, just a perspective on why the friend didn’t like going to movies because of how the culture treats women, even though it works surprisingly well.)
I did consider this, but then I thought, regardless of anything else it is better that the college at least get the funding to be able to ignore this douchebulb.
If 5,200 people donate $10, then that’s one more year in which the college doesn’t have to change what it’s doing, and in that year they (and hopefully SC voters) can work to secure their academic freedom in the long term.
I was disappointed in that, too. I was looking forward to reading it and found it way too orientalist for my taste. Have you read Joe Sacco’s graphic novels on the middle east? Those are quite good. Footnotes in Gaza is especially worth the time. Of course, he’s writing non-fiction, so it’s different.
I have! And I agree, awesome indeed. I read Ware’s Building Stories recently, loved that too. Though I guess that’s about Middle America, instead of the Middle East.
I’ll have to add that to my backlog of things to read… Dropsie Ave by Will Eisner is a good one to read, too, about a street in the Bronx and how it’s social, cultural, and racial make-up changes over time.
Well, it’s all made up of people, so there’s that shared fact.
I’m in for twenty. Times like this I wish I had a lot of dough. I’d set up a permanent endowment for the reading program AND start a PAC to defeat this SC political goon.
