A True Autobiography

            When I picture an autobiography, I see one thing: a thick, hard-covered book with roughly cut linen pages, a pensive, artistically angled portrait adorning the front cover.  The title is short but impactful, usually involving such words as ‘life’ or ‘journey’ or 'dreams.'

Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic is the exact opposite—her autobiography is a graph novel, the front cover illustrated and the words ‘home’ and ‘family’ taking center stage.   It is not illogical, as a reader, to ask why. Why did Bechdel choose to use not only words, but images as her medium for sharing her story and her family’s story?

There are many possible answers to this question, of course, and the reader can only attempt to discover Bechdel’s true meaning.  It is possible that she looks back on her childhood as somewhat farcical—thus, the comic book type layout.  Or, perhaps, she is simply an artist, and pictures are an easier way for her to express her memories.

            To me, however, Bechdel’s choice of genre provides yet another theme, one closely linked to the other paradoxical elements of the book.  It is clear to readers that Bechdel’s life has been littered with emotional challenges; her parents—especially her father—were often distant, emotionally absent.  Her father’s sexuality results in normally straightforward relationships becoming more complicated, and she herself must come to terms with her sexual identity and medical conditions.  Despite everything, Bechdel did find her true self, and she does not look back on her youth with complete disdain.  In fact, as she grew older, she developed a better relationship with her father, so much so that a family friend even remarks about their “unusual closeness” (225).

            There is, however, some lingering doubt and unanswered questions, and Bechdel’s use of the graphic novel genre allows this to come through.  Reading this book by the textual content only—without the pictures and their corresponding speech bubbles and annotations—paints a much more emotional picture.  It is much easier, this way, to pick up on the anger, the sadness, the bitterness, the excitement, the regret, the passion, and the love when reading the words alone.  This makes sense—it allows the readers mind to paint a picture.  The actual pictures, however, represent an entirely different view.  From the first page to the last, the facial expressions on the characters rarely change; Bechdel’s face, her mother’s, and especially her father’s display minimal variability of emotion.  The pictures are black and white, almost sepia in tone, which creates a monotone type mood, and they create a distant, almost fictional relationship between the story and its players.

            And so, despite the fact that Bechdel has clearly been her own person, and has found an identity in which she can live truly, the use of words and pictures together represents a lingering reticence to be entirely certain in her memories.  It provides a way of reconciling the good with the bad, the truths with the perceptions, the normal with the illogical, so that Bechdel’s story does not just become a written record, but a dynamic and true representation of her own perspective.

            Is that not the truest nature of an autobiography?