Fun Home.

Una familia tragicmica (Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic en

ingls) es una historieta creada por Alison Bechdel en el ao 2006.1 La obra,
de carcter autobiogrfico, se centra en la figura del padre de Bechdel, un
director de una funeraria que no es capaz de enfrentarse a su
homosexualidad.2 Tambin se narra como la autora descubre que es
lesbiana,3 aunque a diferencia de su padre, Alison lo acepta con
naturalidad.2 En la obra tambin se refleja la historia de Estados Unidos en
la dcada de 1970, con alusiones al escndalo Watergate o a los disturbios
de Stonewall.4

Fun Home fue la primera historieta finalista del Premio del Crculo de Crticos
Nacional del Libro.5 Adems, recibi el premio Eisner como mejor trabajo
basado en hechos reales,6 el Stonewall Book Award, el Premio Literario
Lambda, el Publishing Triangle-Judy Grahn Nonfiction Award y un GLAAD
Media Awards.7 8 La revista Time incluy a la historieta en el primer puesto
de su ranking de los diez mejores libros del ao 2006.9

En el ao 2013 se estren el musical Fun Home, con guin y letras de Lisa

Kron y msica compuesta por Jeanine Tesori;10 en el ao 2015 gan el
premio Tony al mejor musical.11

Argumento
La historieta narra la historia de la relacin de la autora con su padre, un
profesor de ingls y director de la funeraria familiar, que fallece cuatro
meses despus de que Alison le revelara que era lesbiana.12 La historieta
no sigue una lnea temporal, sino que se alternan fragmentos de la infancia,
adolescencia y juventud de Alison sin seguir un orden establecido.13

Fun Home. Una tragicommedia familiare un romanzo grafico sceneggiato e

disegnato dalla fumettista americana Alison Bechdel. Fun Home stato un
finalista del National Book Critics Circle Award e nel 2007 ha vinto i GLAAD
Media Awards; nel 2015 ha debuttato a Broadway una versione musicale
della graphic novel.[1]

Trama
In un continuo sussesseguirsi di analessi e prolessi, Alison Bechdel ripercorre
la sua vita soffermandosi soprattutto sulla propria omosessualit e sul
rapporto complicato con il padre (anch'egli omosessuale). Bruce Bechdel era
un professore di inglese al liceo cittadino e anche il proprietario di
un'impresa di pompe funebri, che mor in circostanza sospsette (molto
probabilmente suicida) quando la figlia era al college. Nel romanzo grafico,
Alison traccia parallelismi tra la figura del padre e quelle del mito greco o di

grandi romanzi come il Ritratto dell'artista da giovane di James Joyce, per

cercare di conoscere e capire l'uomo che era stato suo padre.

Fun Home, subtitled A Family Tragicomic, is a 2006 graphic memoir by the

American writer Alison Bechdel, author of the comic strip Dykes to Watch
Out For. It chronicles the author's childhood and youth in rural Pennsylvania,
United States, focusing on her complex relationship with her father. The
book addresses themes of sexual orientation, gender roles, suicide,
emotional abuse, dysfunctional family life, and the role of literature in
understanding oneself and one's family. Writing and illustrating Fun Home
took seven years, in part because of Bechdel's laborious artistic process,
which includes photographing herself in poses for each human figure.[1][2]
[3][4]

Fun Home has been both a popular and critical success, and spent two
weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list.[5][6] In The New York Times
Sunday Book Review, Sean Wilsey called it "a pioneering work, pushing two
genres (comics and memoir) in multiple new directions."[7] Several
publications named Fun Home as one of the best books of 2006; it was also
included in several lists of the best books of the 2000s.[8] It was nominated
for several awards, including the National Book Critics Circle Award and
three Eisner Awards (one of which it won).[8][9] A French translation of Fun
Home was serialized in the newspaper Libration; the book was an official
selection of the Angoulme International Comics Festival and has been the
subject of an academic conference in France.[10][11][12] Fun Home has
been the subject of numerous academic publications in areas such as
biography studies and cultural studies, as part of a larger turn towards
serious academic investment in the study of comics/sequential art.[13]

Fun Home also generated controversy: a public library in Missouri removed

Fun Home from its shelves for five months after local residents objected to
its contents, and the book's use in universities in Utah and South Carolina
has been challenged.[14][15][16][17]

Bechdel later traced her maternal relationship in Are You My Mother?: A

Comic Drama.

In 2013 a musical adaptation of Fun Home at The Public Theater enjoyed

multiple extensions to its run,[18][19] with book and lyrics written by Obie
Award-winning playwright Lisa Kron, and score composed by Tony Awardnominated Jeanine Tesori. The production, directed by Sam Gold, was called
"the first mainstream musical about a young lesbian."[20] As a musical
theatre piece, Fun Home was a finalist for the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Drama,
while winning the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Musical, the New York
Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Musical, and the Obie Award for Musical

Theater.[21][22][23][24] The Broadway production opened in April 2015,[25]

and earned an even dozen nominations for the 69th Tony Awards, winning
the Tony Award for Best Musical.

Plot and thematic summary[edit]

A panel from Fun Home depicting

Bruce (left) and Alison Bechdel.
The narrative of Fun Home is non-linear and recursive.[26] Incidents are told
and re-told in the light of new information or themes.[27] Bechdel describes
the structure of Fun Home as a labyrinth, "going over the same material, but
starting from the outside and spiraling in to the center of the story."[28] In
an essay on memoirs and truth in the academic journal PMLA, Nancy K.
Miller explains that as Bechdel revisits scenes and themes "she re-creates
memories in which the force of attachment generates the structure of the
memoir itself."[29] Additionally, the memoir derives its structure from
allusions to various works of literature, Greek myth and visual arts; the
events of Bechdel's family life during her childhood and adolescence are
presented through this allusive lens.[26] Miller notes that the narratives of
the referenced literary texts "provide clues, both true and false, to the
mysteries of family relations."[29]

The memoir focuses on Bechdel's family, and is centered on her relationship

with her father, Bruce. Bruce Bechdel was a funeral director and high school
English teacher in Beech Creek, where Alison and her siblings grew up. The
book's title comes from the family nickname for the funeral home, the family
business in which Bruce Bechdel grew up and later worked; the phrase also
refers ironically to Bruce Bechdel's tyrannical domestic rule.[30] Bruce
Bechdel's two occupations are reflected in Fun Home's focus on death and
literature.[31]

In the beginning of the book, the memoir exhibits Bruce Bechdel's obsession
with restoring the family's Victorian home.[31] His obsessive need to restore
the house is connected to his emotional distance from his family, which he
expressed in coldness and occasional bouts of abusive rage.[31][32] This
emotional distance, in turn, is connected with his being a closeted
homosexual.[33] Bruce Bechdel had homosexual relationships in the military
and with his high school students; some of those students were also family
friends and babysitters.[34] At the age of 44, two weeks after his wife
requested a divorce, he stepped into the path of an oncoming Sunbeam
Bread truck and was killed.[35] Although the evidence is equivocal, Alison
Bechdel concludes that her father committed suicide.[31][36][37]

The story also deals with Alison Bechdel's own struggle with her sexual
identity, reaching a catharsis in the realization that she is a lesbian and her
coming out to her parents.[31][38] The memoir frankly examines her sexual
development, including transcripts from her childhood diary, anecdotes
about masturbation, and tales of her first sexual experiences with her
girlfriend, Joan.[39] In addition to their common homosexuality, Alison and
Bruce Bechdel share obsessive-compulsive tendencies and artistic leanings,
albeit with opposing aesthetic senses: "I was Spartan to my father's
Athenian. Modern to his Victorian. Butch to his nelly. Utilitarian to his
aesthete."[40] This opposition was a source of tension in their relationship,
as both tried to express their dissatisfaction with their given gender roles:
"Not only were we inverts, we were inversions of each other. While I was
trying to compensate for something unmanly in him, he was attempting to
express something feminine through me. It was a war of cross-purposes,
and so doomed to perpetual escalation."[41] However, shortly before Bruce
Bechdel's death, he and his daughter have a conversation in which Bruce
confesses some of his sexual history; this is presented as a partial resolution
to the conflict between father and daughter.[42]

At several points in the book, Bechdel questions whether her decision to

come out as a lesbian was one of the triggers for her father's suicide.[29]
[43] This question is never answered definitively, but Bechdel closely
examines the connection between her father's closeted sexuality and her
own open lesbianism, revealing her debt to her father in both positive and
negative lights.[29][31][37]

Themes[edit]
Fun Home has several themes recurring throughout the book. The biggest
theme, arguably, is sexual orientation. Bechdel tells the readers of her
journey of discovering her own sexuality through books. "My realization at
nineteen that I was a lesbian came about in a manner consistent with my
bookish upbringing."[44] Her exposure (from reading literal definitions in
dictionaries, reading interviews of others like her, etc.) helped her come to
terms with her sexuality, but in truth, the hints of it plagued her childhood:
her desire "for the right to exchange [her] tank suit for a pair of shorts" in
Cannes"[45] or her desire for her brothers to call her Albert instead of Alison
on one camping trip.[46] However, Bechdel also reveals that she wasn't
alone in her choice of partners; her father also exhibited some homosexual
behaviors, but in a different way than Alison. "I'd been upstaged, demoted
from protagonist in my own drama to comic relief in my parents' tragedy"
quoted on page 58 when her mother reveals Bechdel's father's secret.
Though both, father and daughter, had similar situations (Bechdel was a
lesbian while her father was gay or bisexual), the two handled their issues
differently. Bechdel chose to accept the fact and not hide from the issue,
taking a female partner and going to "gay union" meetings when she was a
student at Oberlin College . Bechdel was open about her sexuality before
she'd even been in a same-sex relationship (of any sort). Her father, on the

other hand, had had countless affairs with men but wasn't open about it ".
[47] This may be due to homophobia (his and/or others'), or because he was
married with a family. In any case, it is clear that he is afraid of coming out,
as illustrated by "the fear in his eyes" when the conversation topic is
dangerously close to homosexuality.[48]

In addition to sexual orientation, the memoir touches on the theme of

gender identity. Bechdel had viewed her father as "a big sissy""[49] while
her father constantly tried to change his daughter into a more feminine
person throughout her childhood.

The third, underlying theme of death is also portrayed. Unlike most young
people, the Bechdel children have a tangible relationship with death
because of the family mortuary business. Alison ponders whether Bechdel's
father's death was an accident or suicide, and finds it more likely that he
killed himself purposefully.[50] Whether this was because of his own
sexuality, Alison's sexuality, or some other cause remains unclear.

Allusions[edit]
The allusive literary references used in Fun Home are not merely structural
or stylistic: Bechdel writes, "I employ these allusions ... not only as
descriptive devices, but because my parents are most real to me in fictional
terms. And perhaps my cool aesthetic distance itself does more to convey
the Arctic climate of our family than any particular literary comparison."[51]
Bechdel, as the narrator, considers her relationship to her father through the
myth of Daedalus and Icarus.[52] As a child, she confused her family and
their Gothic Revival home with the Addams Family seen in the cartoons of
Charles Addams.[53] Bruce Bechdel's suicide is discussed with reference to
Albert Camus' novel A Happy Death and essay The Myth of Sisyphus.[54] His
careful construction of an aesthetic and intellectual world is compared to
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the narrator suggests that
Bruce Bechdel modeled elements of his life after Fitzgerald's, as portrayed
in the biography The Far Side of Paradise.[55] His wife Helen is compared
with the protagonists of the Henry James novels Washington Square and The
Portrait of a Lady.[56] Helen Bechdel was an amateur actress, and plays in
which she acted are also used to illuminate aspects of her marriage. She
met Bruce Bechdel when the two were appearing in a college production of
The Taming of the Shrew, and Alison Bechdel intimates that this was "a
harbinger of my parents' later marriage".[57] Helen Bechdel's role as Lady
Bracknell in a local production of The Importance of Being Earnest is shown
in some detail; Bruce Bechdel is compared with Oscar Wilde.[58] His
homosexuality is also examined with allusion to Marcel Proust's In Search of
Lost Time.[59] The father and daughter's artistic and obsessive-compulsive
tendencies are discussed with reference to E. H. Shepard's illustrations for
The Wind in the Willows.[60] Bruce and Alison Bechdel exchange hints about
their sexualities by exchanging memoirs: the father gives the daughter

Earthly Paradise, an autobiographical collection of the writings of Colette;

shortly afterwards, in what Alison Bechdel describes as "an eloquent
unconscious gesture", she leaves a library copy of Kate Millett's memoir
Flying for him.[61] Finally, returning to the Daedalus myth, Alison Bechdel
casts herself as Stephen Dedalus and her father as Leopold Bloom in James
Joyce's Ulysses, with parallel references to the myth of Telemachus and
Odysseus.[62]

The chapter headings, too, are all literary allusions.[63] The first chapter,
"Old Father, Old Artificer," refers to line in Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a
Young Man, and the second, "A Happy Death," invokes the Camus novel.
"That Old Catastrophe" is a line from Wallace Stevens's "Sunday Morning,"
and "In the Shadow of the Young Girls in Flower" is the literal translation of
the title of one of the volumes of Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time,
which is usually given in English as Within a Budding Grove.

In addition to the literary allusions which are explicitly acknowledged in the

text, Bechdel incorporates visual allusions to television programs and other
items of pop culture into her artwork, often as images on a television in the
background of a panel.[33] These visual references include the film It's a
Wonderful Life, Bert and Ernie of Sesame Street, the Smiley Face, Yogi Bear,
Batman, the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote, the resignation of Richard
Nixon and The Flying Nun.[33][64]

Artwork[edit]
Fun Home is drawn in black line art with a gray-green ink wash.[2] Sean
Wilsey wrote that Fun Home's panels "combine the detail and technical
proficiency of R. Crumb with a seriousness, emotional complexity and
innovation completely its own."[7] Writing in the Gay & Lesbian Review
Worldwide, Diane Ellen Hamer contrasted "Bechdel's habit of drawing her
characters very simply and yet distinctly" with "the attention to detail that
she devotes to the background, those TV shows and posters on the wall, not
to mention the intricacies of the funeral home as a recurring backdrop."[33]
Bechdel told an interviewer for The Comics Journal that the richness of each
panel of Fun Home was very deliberate:

It's very important for me that people be able to read the images in the
same kind of gradually unfolding way as they're reading the text. I don't like
pictures that don't have information in them. I want pictures that you have
to read, that you have to decode, that take time, that you can get lost in.
Otherwise what's the point?[65]

Alison Bechdel took photographs of herself posing as each character, to use

as reference in her drawing. Here, she poses for a drawing of her father.
Bechdel wrote and illustrated Fun Home over a seven-year period.[1] Her
meticulous artistic process made the task of illustration slow. She began
each page by creating a framework in Adobe Illustrator, on which she placed
the text and drew rough figures.[2][3] She used extensive photo reference
and, for many panels, posed for each human figure herself, using a digital
camera to record her poses.[2][3][4][37] Bechdel also used photo reference
for background elements. For example, to illustrate a panel depicting
fireworks seen from a Greenwich Village rooftop on July 4, 1976, she used
Google Images to find a photograph of the New York skyline taken from that
particular building in that period.[3][66][67] She also painstakingly copied
by hand many family photographs, letters, local maps and excerpts from her
own childhood journal, incorporating these images into her narrative.[66]
After using the reference material to draw a tight framework for the page,
Bechdel copied the line art illustration onto plate finish Bristol board for the
final inked page, which she then scanned into her computer.[2][3] The graygreen ink wash for each page was drawn on a separate page of watercolor
paper, and combined with the inked image using Photoshop.[2][3][37]
Bechdel chose the greenish wash color for its flexibility, and because it had
"a bleak, elegiac quality" which suited the subject matter.[68] Bechdel
attributes this detailed creative process to her "barely controlled obsessivecompulsive disorder".[66][69]

Publication and reception[edit]

Fun Home was first printed in hardcover by Houghton Mifflin (Boston, New
York) on June 8, 2006.[70] This edition appeared on the New York Times'
Hardcover Nonfiction bestseller list for two weeks, covering the period from
June 18 to July 1, 2006.[5][6] It continued to sell well, and by February 2007
there were 55,000 copies in print.[71] A trade paperback edition was
published in the United Kingdom by Random House under the Jonathan
Cape imprint on September 14, 2006; Houghton Mifflin published a
paperback edition under the Mariner Books imprint on June 5, 2007.[72][73]

The French edition of Fun Home, published by ditions Denol

In the summer of 2006, a French translation of Fun Home was serialized in
the Paris newspaper Libration (which had previously serialized Persepolis
by Marjane Satrapi).[10] This translation, by Corinne Julve and Lili Sztajn,
was subsequently published by ditions Denol on October 26, 2006.[74] In
January 2007, Fun Home was an official selection of the Angoulme
International Comics Festival.[11] In the same month, the Anglophone
Studies department of the Universit Franois Rabelais, Tours sponsored an
academic conference on Bechdel's work, with presentations in Paris and
Tours.[12] At this conference, papers were presented examining Fun Home
from several perspectives: as containing "trajectories" filled with paradoxical

tension; as a text interacting with images as a paratext; and as a search for

meaning using drag as a metaphor.[75][76][77] These papers and others on
Bechdel and her work were later published in the peer-reviewed journal
GRAAT (Groupe de Recherches Anglo-Amricaines de Tours, or Tours AngloAmerican Research Group).[78][79]

An Italian translation was published by Rizzoli in January 2007.[80][81] In

Brazil, Conrad Editora published a Portuguese translation in 2007.[82] A
German translation was published by Kiepenheuer & Witsch in January 2008.
[83] The book has also been translated into Hungarian, Korean, and Polish,
[84] and a Chinese translation has been scheduled for publication.[85]

In Spring 2012, Bechdel and Professor Hillary Chute co-taught a course at

the University of Chicago titled "Lines of Transmission: Comics and
Autobiography".[86]

Reviews and awards[edit]

Fun Home was positively reviewed in many publications. The Times of
London described Fun Home as "a profound and important book;" Salon.com
called it "a beautiful, assured piece of work;" and The New York Times ran
two separate reviews and a feature on the memoir.[7][31][87][88][89] In
one New York Times review, Sean Wilsey called Fun Home "a pioneering
work, pushing two genres (comics and memoir) in multiple new directions"
and "a comic book for lovers of words".[7] Jill Soloway, writing in the Los
Angeles Times, praised the work overall but commented that Bechdel's
reference-heavy prose is at times "a little opaque".[90] Similarly, a reviewer
in The Tyee felt that "the narrator's insistence on linking her story to those
of various Greek myths, American novels and classic plays" was "forced"
and "heavy-handed".[67] By contrast, the Seattle Times' reviewer wrote
positively of the book's use of literary reference, calling it "staggeringly
literate".[91] The Village Voice said that Fun Home "shows how powerfully
and economicallythe medium can portray autobiographical narrative. With
two-part visual and verbal narration that isn't simply synchronous, comics
presents a distinctive narrative idiom in which a wealth of information may
be expressed in a highly condensed fashion."[26]

Alison Bechdel at a London signing for Fun Home

Several publications listed Fun Home as one of the best books of 2006,
including The New York Times, Amazon.com, The Times of London, New York
magazine and Publishers Weekly, which ranked it as the best comic book of
2006.[92][93][94][95][96][97] Salon.com named Fun Home the best
nonfiction debut of 2006, admitting that they were fudging the definition of
"debut" and saying, "Fun Home shimmers with regret, compassion,

annoyance, frustration, pity and loveusually all at the same time and
never without a pervasive, deeply literary irony about the near-impossible
task of staying true to yourself, and to the people who made you who you
are."[98] Entertainment Weekly called it the best nonfiction book of the
year, and Time named Fun Home the best book of 2006, describing it as
"the unlikeliest literary success of 2006" and "a masterpiece about two
people who live in the same house but different worlds, and their mysterious
debts to each other."[99][100]

Fun Home was a finalist for the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award, in
the memoir/autobiography category.[101][102] In 2007, Fun Home won the
GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Comic Book, the Stonewall Book Award
for non-fiction, the Publishing Triangle-Judy Grahn Nonfiction Award, and the
Lambda Literary Award in the "Lesbian Memoir and Biography" category.
[103][104][105][106] Fun Home was nominated for the 2007 Eisner Awards
in two categories, Best Reality-Based Work and Best Graphic Album, and
Bechdel was nominated as Best Writer/Artist.[107] Fun Home won the Eisner
for Best Reality-Based Work.[9] In 2008, Entertainment Weekly placed Fun
Home at #68 in its list of "New Classics" (defined as "the 100 best books
from 1983 to 2008").[108] The Guardian included Fun Home in its series
"1000 novels everyone must read", noting its "beautifully rendered" details.
[109]

In 2009, Fun Home was listed as one of the best books of the previous
decade by The Times of London, Entertainment Weekly and Salon.com, and
as one of the best comic books of the decade by The Onion's A.V. Club.[8]
[110]

In 2010, the Los Angeles Times literary blog "Jacket Copy" named Fun Home
as one of "20 classic works of gay literature".[111]

Challenges and attempted banning[edit]

In October 2006, a resident of Marshall, Missouri attempted to have Fun
Home and Craig Thompson's Blankets, both graphic novels, removed from
the city's public library.[112] Supporters of the books' removal characterized
them as "pornography" and expressed concern that they would be read by
children.[14][113] Marshall Public Library Director Amy Crump defended the
books as having been well-reviewed in "reputable, professional book review
journals," and characterized the removal attempt as a step towards "the
slippery slope of censorship".[112][113] On October 11, 2006, the library's
board appointed a committee to create a materials selection policy, and
removed Fun Home and Blankets from circulation until the new policy was
approved.[114][115] The committee "decided not to assign a prejudicial
label or segregate [the books] by a prejudicial system", and presented a
materials selection policy to the board.[116][117] On March 14, 2007, the

Marshall Public Library Board of Trustees voted to return both Fun Home and
Blankets to the library's shelves.[15] Bechdel described the attempted
banning as "a great honor", and described the incident as "part of the whole
evolution of the graphic-novel form."[118]

In 2008, an instructor at the University of Utah placed Fun Home on the

syllabus of a mid-level English course, "Critical Introduction to English
Literary Forms".[119] One student objected to the assignment, and was
given an alternate reading in accordance with the university's religious
accommodation policy.[119] The student subsequently contacted a local
organization called "No More Pornography", which started an online petition
calling for the book to be removed from the syllabus.[16] Vincent Pecora,
the chair of the university's English department, defended Fun Home and
the instructor.[16] The university said that it had no plans to remove the
book.[16]

In 2013, Palmetto Family, a conservative South Carolina group affiliated with

Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council, challenged the
inclusion of Fun Home as a reading selection for incoming freshmen at the
College of Charleston.[17][120][121] Palmetto Family president Oran Smith
called the book "pornographic".[120] Bechdel disputed this, saying that
pornography is designed to cause sexual arousal, which is not the purpose
of her book.[17] College provost George Hynd and associate provost Lynne
Ford defended the choice of Fun Home, pointing out that its themes of
identity are especially appropriate for college freshmen.[17] However, seven
months later, the Republican-led South Carolina House of Representatives
Ways and Means Committee cut the college's funding by $52,000, the cost
of the summer reading program, to punish the college for selecting Fun
Home.[122][123] Rep. Garry Smith, who proposed the cuts, said that in
choosing Fun Home the university was "promoting the gay and lesbian
lifestyle".[123][124] Rep. Stephen Goldfinch, another supporter of the cuts,
said, "This book trampled on freedom of conservatives. ... Teaching with this
book, and the pictures, goes too far."[125] Bechdel called the funding cut
"sad and absurd" and pointed out that Fun Home "is after all about the toll
that this sort of small-mindedness takes on people's lives."[126] The full
state House of Representatives subsequently voted to retain the cuts.[127]
College of Charleston students and faculty reacted with dismay and protests
to the proposed cuts, and the college's Student Government Association
unanimously passed a resolution urging that the funding be restored.[128]
[129][130] A coalition of ten free-speech organizations wrote a letter to the
South Carolina Senate Finance Committee, urging them to restore the funds
and warning them that "[p]enalising state educational institutions financially
simply because members of the legislature disapprove of specific elements
of the educational program is educationally unsound and constitutionally
suspect".[129][131][132] The letter was co-signed by the National Coalition
Against Censorship, the ACLU of South Carolina, the American Association of
University Professors, the Modern Language Association, the Association of
College and Research Libraries, the American Booksellers Foundation for

Free Expression, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, the Association of
American Publishers, the National Council of Teachers of English and the
American Library Association.[132][133] After a nearly week-long debate in
which Fun Home and Bechdel were compared to slavery, Charles Manson
and Adolf Hitler, the state Senate voted to restore the funding, but redirect
the funds towards study of the United States Constitution and The Federalist
Papers; the university was also required to provide alternate books to
students who object to an assignment due to a "religious, moral or cultural
belief".[134][135][136] Governor Nikki Haley approved the budget measure
penalizing the university.[137]

In 2015, the book was assigned as summer reading for the incoming class of
2019 at Duke University. Several students objected to the book on moral
and/or religious grounds.[138]

Musical adaptation[edit]
Main article: Fun Home (musical)
Fun Home has been adapted into a stage musical, with book by Lisa Kron
and music by Jeanine Tesori. The play was first developed in a 2009
workshop at the Ojai Playwrights Conference, and subsequently
workshopped in 2012 at the Sundance Theatre Lab and The Public Theater's
Public Lab.[139][140][141]

The musical debuted Off-Broadway at The Public Theater on September 30,

2013.[18] The production was directed by Sam Gold, and starred Michael
Cerveris as Bruce Bechdel and Judy Kuhn as Helen Bechdel. The role of
Alison was played by three actors: Beth Malone played the adult Alison,
reviewing and narrating her life, Alexandra Socha played "Medium Alison"
(Alison as a student at Oberlin, discovering her sexuality), and Sydney Lucas
played Small Alison (Alison as a child). Originally scheduled to run through
November 3, 2013, the Public Theater run was extended multiple times and
closed on January 12, 2014.[19] It received largely positive reviews.[142]
[143][144] The musical was a finalist for the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Drama; it
also won the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Musical, the New York
Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Musical, and the Obie Award for Musical
Theater.[21][22][23][24] Alison Bechdel drew a one-page comic about the
musical adaptation for the newspaper Seven Days.[145]

A Broadway production was announced[25][146] and opened at Circle in the

Square Theatre in April 2015. The production won five awards at the 2015
Tony Awards, including Best Musical.[147]