She responds to her mother's letter and, a few days later, speaks with her on the phone. In response, her father calls her, seemingly pleased with the news, but her mother sends back a typed letter voicing her general disapproval.Īlison writes about her parents' reaction to her coming out in her diary, smearing her own blood on the page after accidentally cutting herself with her new Swiss army knife. Finally, she decides to write the letter to her parents.

She reads as much feminist literature as she can and joins the gay union on campus. The chapter then returns to Alison's realization at the age of nineteen that she is a lesbian, and her subsequent exploration of her sexuality. As a witness to this dysfunction, Alison had decided at a young age to never get married. This certainly took a toll on his marriage Bechdel notes that Helen and Bruce Bechdel rarely showed affection toward each other and fought often. In a drawing, Bechdel reveals that Bruce would often neglect his family duties in order to spend time with these boys, in particular, Roy. In particular, Alison describes how her father used to take pride in loaning out his personal library books to high school students, particularly boys with whom, in retrospect, he was likely having affairs. Alison speculates that Bruce saw himself in Fitzgerald's characters and took great pleasure in sharing his insights about the author with anyone who would listen.

Scott Fitzgerald, which he quoted in his letters to her. While he was away, Helen had sent him a biography of F.

He joined the army after dropping out of graduate school. Her mother's response to Alison's letter was to reveal some 'queer' information of her own: Bruce Bechdel had been having affairs with men for years.īechdel believes that her father's life can be understood through the books he loved most. She reveals that she came out to her parents as a lesbian via a letter sent from college not too long before Bruce's demise. Bechdel begins this chapter by describing the ways in which her fathers death was 'queer' (57).

Fun home alison