Allison Bechdel's Fun Home represents graphic novels and memoirs at their finest. Her story is told in a non-linear fashion between Bechdel growing up in rural Pennsylvania with her parents and siblings at the 'Fun Home' (their nickname for the family funeral home) and Oberlin College; the primary setting for Bechdel's sexual awakening. The memoir focuses on Bechdel unraveling and making sense of her own sexuality and gender with and without the context of her father, a task that is much harder than initially believed. Early on readers discover that Bechdel's father divorces his wife later in life, outs himself as gay and only a short time later dies in what may have been a suicide. Bechdel ties in the themes of a dysfunctional family, a coming of age story, and her queerness in an artistic and seamless fashion. Fun Home, one of the best books of the 2000s, is often read in college-level women's studies and LGBT+ courses and was recently adapted into a Tony award-winning musical in 2015.
A memoir done in the form of a graphic novel by a cult favorite comic artist offers a darkly funny family portrait that details her relationship with her father--a funeral home director, high school English teacher, and closeted homosexual.