Amy rubin
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Author and cartoonist Alison Bechdel was born in Beech Creek, Pennsylvania, to Helen and Bruce Bechdel. Bruce, her father, operated a funeral home part time, which Alison and her brothers, Bruce and John, called the Fun Home.
At the age of 19, she came out to her parents as a lesbian. A later conversation with her father revealed his intimate past with other men. This discovery brought more questions than answers when Bruce committed suicide shortly after, although Bechdel says “there’s no proof [just] some suggestive circumstances.”
Graduating high school a year early, she attended Simon’s Rock College before transferring to Oberlin College in Ohio. In 1981, she received her degree in studio arts and art history.
Bechdel first garnered success for her comics with the strip Dykes to Watch Out For, first published in 1983 in the feminist newspaper WomaNews. Her comic strip ran until 2008, becoming one of the first representations of lesbians in popular culture. The strip follows a group of diverse characters, most of them lesbians, as they experience life, love and
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On September 10, 1960, Alison Bechdel was born to Bruce and Helen Bechdel in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania. Less than ten miles away, Beech Creek, Pennsylvania, was her home for most of her childhood. Bechdel rejected stereotypical "girl" behavior by keeping her hair short and playing among boys. She also spent much of her time with her brothers, one older and one younger, helping her father, an antiques collector, by gathering antiques to restore their 4,000-square-foot, Gothic Revival mansion to its original 1880s form. Her father was a funeral home director, and he used another nearby house in town as the funeral home, which Bechdel and her brothers aptly, yet ironically, named "Fun Home." Her mother was an actress and taught English literature at their local high school, just as her father did.
Bechdel began drawing at the age of three, and she still has the drawings to prove it. The evolution of her drawings can be found in The Indelible Alison Bechdel: Confessions, Comix, and Miscellaneous Dykes to Watch Out For (1998). In this semi-autobiographical work, she states, "I spent
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Alison Bechdel
American cartoonist
"Bechdel" redirects here. For the test, see Bechdel test. For other uses, see Bechdel (disambiguation).
Alison Bechdel (BEK-dəl;[1] born September 10, 1960) is an American cartoonist. Originally known for the long-running comic stripDykes to Watch Out For, she came to critical and commercial success in 2006 with her graphicmemoirFun Home. Fun Home was subsequently adapted as a musical that won a Tony Award for Best Musical in 2015.[2] In 2012, she released her second graphic memoir Are You My Mother? She was a 2014 recipient of the MacArthur "Genius" Award.[3] She is also known for originating what would later be called the Bechdel test.
Early life
Bechdel was born in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania. She is the daughter of Helen Augusta (née Fontana)[4] and Bruce Allen Bechdel. Her family was Roman Catholic. Her father was an army veteran who was stationed in West Germany. He was also a high school English teacher, working full-time and operating a funeral home part-time. Her mother was
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