{"id":21306,"date":"2020-12-13T09:55:00","date_gmt":"2020-12-13T13:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=21306"},"modified":"2020-12-22T10:13:20","modified_gmt":"2020-12-22T14:13:20","slug":"fun-home-nyc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/fun-home-nyc\/","title":{"rendered":"Fun Home: NYC Trip Changes Alison’s Perspective"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What happens in the Fun Home<\/em> NYC scenes? What does Alison Bechdel learn about herself from traveling to New York City?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Fun Home<\/em>, NYC offers one of Alisons’ first experiences seeing an LGBT community. She first visited with her father, and learned more about him through the trip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read about Fun Home<\/em>, NYC, and how the trip changed Alison’s perspective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Fun Home in NYC<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

While on a trip to NYC in 1976, a 15-year old Alison saw the city in a new light. <\/strong>She was traveling with her father and brothers to take part in the bicentennial celebrations. They stayed with a family friend who lived in Greenwich Village, a well-known LGBT community. During her time there, she began to notice the well-groomed, homosexual men walking on the street, not trying to hide their more feminine behaviors. Her family went to the ballet, had drinks with a gay couple, and saw A Chorus Line<\/em>. These activities introduced her to members of the LGBT community and exposed her to LGBT stories.<\/strong> The the Fun Home<\/em> NYC scenes, these experiences are eye-opening for Alison. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, the trip was not without its problems, and Alison\u2019s father wasn\u2019t always an attentive parent. At one point on the trip, one of Alison\u2019s younger brothers, John, wandered off. <\/strong>He walked through a known cruising area and was approached by a man who asked if he \u201cwanted to see his boat.\u201d At the first opportunity, John ran back to the apartment. In addition to John\u2019s close call, Alison\u2019s father would leave his kids to go out and \u201chave a drink\u201d late at night. Alison implies that he was likely meeting up with men and leaving his children to fulfill his sexual needs.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Years after the Fun Home<\/em> NYC section, Alison moved to New York. She believes that, had her father not died from the car accident, there was a good chance he\u2019d have died shortly after with the emergence of the AIDS crisis<\/a>. <\/strong>This is because the LGBT community in New York was the center of the AIDS epidemic in the 80s, and Alison\u2019s father had a tendency to go out at night and sleep with men from that community when he visited the city. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While she stands behind this observation, she notes it may be merely her attempt to find peace or meaning within her father\u2019s passing. It would make him a tragic figure who lived a secretly promiscuous lifestyle because homophobia had forced him to repress his identity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Literature and Education<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Once Alison developed the ability to discuss literature in an intellectual way, she and her father began to connect. When Alison was in high school, she was assigned to her father\u2019s English class. During this time, she discovered that she enjoyed the same types of books that her father did. Their discussions of literature extended beyond the classroom and helped them develop a closer relationship.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Alison started college, she and her father actively talked about the books she was assigned in her English classes. However, his excitement for the literature she was reading soon left little room for her to have her own thoughts or opinions. She believes that he was living vicariously through her instead of connecting with her.<\/strong> Because of this, she began to move away from the literature that her father loved and began to focus more on her journey into LGBT culture. In Fun Home,<\/em> her NYC experience was one of the first pushes to explore this culture. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At one point, Alison swore she was never going to take another English class during her time at school, but an oversight led her to take a January-term course discussing Ulysses <\/em>by James Joyce. Ulysses <\/em>was Alison\u2019s father\u2019s favorite book. He gave her a variety of materials to study before she began reading Joyce\u2019s novel. One of these resources was Earthly Paradise <\/em>by Colette. <\/strong>Collette was an influential voice in women\u2019s independence<\/a> in France and a known lesbian. At the time, Alison believed that her father gave her that book as a sign that he knew about her sexuality. Much after first beginning to understand her father in the Fun Home<\/em> NYC scenes, Alison found she connected to him again. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What happens in the Fun Home NYC scenes? What does Alison Bechdel learn about herself from traveling to New York City? In Fun Home, NYC offers one of Alisons’ first experiences seeing an LGBT community. She first visited with her father, and learned more about him through the trip. 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