Alison Bechdel
Alison Bechdel
Alison Bechdelis an American cartoonist. Originally best known for the long-running comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For, she came to critical and commercial success in 2006 with her graphic memoir Fun Home, which was subsequently adapted as a musical which won a Tony Award for Best Musical in 2015. She is a 2014 recipient of the MacArthur "Genius" Award. She is also known for the Bechdel test, an indicator of gender bias in film...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionCartoonist
Date of Birth10 September 1960
CountryUnited States of America
I mean, I'll have an idea about what a panel will look like as I'm writing, but I often don't touch a pencil until the text is completely finished.
I probably read Harriet the Spy about 70,000 times.
It's definitely part of it, that the men were having fun and doing the interesting things but also, I don't know, I'm just thinking more about gender and how maybe in some way I am more of a boy than a girl.
Writing this book feels like a completely different activity from writing my comic strip because it's about real life. I feel like I'm using a part of my brain that's been dormant until now.
I get a lot of mail from men who really identify with Stuart, you know, Sparrow's boyfriend. I love that. Even though I used to say I wanted men to read the strip even though there weren't any men in it, so they'd be forced to identify with the women.
That's all true, but there was something else going on for me as a kid, something about my gender identity that I haven't figured out yet. And that's one of the things I'm hoping to dissect and investigate in this memoir project.
But mostly, it's a book about my relationship with my father.
My mother is, my father certainly was. They were kind of the local intelligentsia in the town where I grew up.
Yeah, I think some of that is just wish-fulfillment, you know, how little kids fantasize through their drawings. I wanted to be powerful.
I suppose that a lifetime spent hiding one's erotic truth could have a cumulative renunciatory effect. Sexual shame is in itself a kind of death.
I'll watch a movie only if it meets the following criteria: 1. It has to have at least two women in it. 2. Who talk to each other. 3. About something besides a man.
What would happen if we spoke the truth?
I started to get bored with that stuff about only drawing men and I've taken it out of the slideshow.
I probably read Harriet the Spy about 70,000 times.