Bechdel the Future

By Margaret Hicks in Arts & Entertainment on Jul 6, 2006 1:48PM

Lately, we’ve been seeing the name Alison Bechdel everywhere. Every time we look at the book reviews, her name keeps popping up, Bechdel, Bechdel, everywhere a Bechdel.

Bechdel is relatively well known for her comic strip “Dykes to Watch Out For”, about a group of lesbian and gay friends. She’s been penning the strip since 1983 and it runs in over 50 alternative papers around the country.

Now Bechdel has written a graphic-novel-memoir, based on her family life. “Fun Home” pairs her comics with a deeply felt autobiography, divulging the story of her childhood, her father’s own repressed homosexuality and the confusion over his death not long after Bechdel’s own coming out.

Bechdel has been a relentless recorder of her life, writing journals and keeping in-depth expense reports since the age of ten. Her memoir, in this day and age of literary made-up truths, has an unmistakable emotional credibility that’s just not found in other autobiographies.

We checked out Bechdel’s blog, and we were hooked by her questioning of her success. Now that she’s finding real fame with her book, people are making her previous small successes even larger, somehow rewriting a history that didn’t exist.

A lot of people are excited about this author and her book, and from what we can tell, for good reason, we’re happy to help spread the word.

You can see Alison Bechdel at Women & Children First Bookstore, 5233 N. Clark St., on Sunday, July 9th, at 4 p.m. This event is free and open to the public. 773/769-9299