297: Alison Bechdel's FUN HOME: A FAMILY TRAGICOMIC - September 2025 Book Club

Have you read Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic or seen the musical adaptation? In episode 297, our September Book Club pick takes us into Bechdel’s layered, brilliant graphic memoir about family, identity, and the stories we use to make sense of our lives.

We kick things off with a bookish check-in (Ashley’s listening to Jennifer Lynn Barnes’s The Ruling Class; Jen just started Angeline Boulley’s Sisters in the Wind) and then dive into Fun Home. We discuss Bechdel's literary references and her stark honesty, the grief and humor, and why this one is so often challenged. We’d love to hear your thoughts and favorite moments from the book. Come join the conversation!

Bookish Check-in

Ashley - Jennifer Lynn Barnes’ The Ruling Class (Bookshop.org | Libro.fm)

Jen - Angeline Boulley’s Sisters in the Wind (Bookshop.org | Libro.fm)

Our Book Club Pick

Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (Bookshop.org)

Our Pairings

Ashley - Roz Chast’s Can’t We Talk about Something More Pleasant? (Bookshop.org)

Jen - Laura Gao’s Messy Roots: A Graphic Memoir of a Wuhanese American (Bookshop.org)

Unabridged Favorites

Listen in to hear our favorites from this month!

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FULL TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Ashley: Welcome to the Unabridged Podcast. I'm Ashley, and this is Jen. Join us for bookish episodes and check out our website underbridgedpod.com, where you can find lots of new bookish content to grow your TBR.

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[00:00:18] Find us on Patreon for extra Unabridged content. Join us on Instagram and Facebook @unabridgedpod and message us there or see our website to get plugged into the Unabridged community. You want opinions about books? We've got 'em.

[00:00:35] Hey everyone, and welcome to Unabridged. This is episode 297. Today, we are discussing our September book, the club book. Alison Bechdel's Fun Home, a family tragic comic. Before we get started, we are going to do our bookish check-in.

[00:00:51] Ashley, what are you reading?

[00:00:53] Ashley: So one of the books I'm reading, I'm listening to this one, thanks to Libro Fm. This just came out, but we'll caveat on that. We'll talk about that in a second. This is Jennifer Lynn Barnes's, The Ruling Class, and I didn't know until right before we were recording, Jen mentioned that this is actually a re-release.

[00:01:11] Jen: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:01:12] Ashley: Oh, it was called The Fixer Before, and so this is one; if you've been listening to the podcast for a long time, you know we have done some of Barnes's books.

[00:01:22] It might only be that we've done the Naturals together within Unabridged, but Jen and I have both read quite a few of Barnes' series, and we started with the Naturals. I think that was the first one I read. And it is like serial killer stuff, which is usually not my vibe, but I was really into it anyway.

[00:01:39] And so since the,n I've been a big fan. So I have this one thanks to Libro FM's ALC program, and I did think it was a new book, but then Jen was sharing that. In fact, it is like a, you know, a new edition of this book. Anyway, it is set at a private school, where Tess is our main character, and her whole life has been kind of upended.

[00:02:02] And she is going to live with her sister in DC Her sister, Ivy, who's a lot older than her, Tess had been living with their grandfather for a huge percentage of her childhood. Tess and Ivy's parents had died in a car accident when Tess was very young.

[00:02:44] Ivy is much older than Tess, and so Ivy knew their parents a lot better and then went on to, you know, live her adult life. Whereas Tess stayed with their grandfather. And so Tess is like super close to their grandfather, but he's getting older, and he is having a lot of memory problems, and

[00:03:03] Some things are going on that Tess is trying to hold everything down, take care of everything, and continue living with him, but it becomes more and more apparent right at the beginning of the book that she is really gonna need some support, and he's gonna need some support that she cannot give him.

[00:03:16] So right at the beginning, Tess is being kind of uprooted and taken to be where Ivy is in D.C., and therefore she winds up in this private school, Hardwick, and when she gets there, she quickly discovers. She does not know anything about what Ivy, her older sister, does, but it's clear that the people on campus do know and that her sister clearly has a lot of power.

[00:03:43] And so she starts to learn all about this world of politics and high-profile professions and then the kids who, you know, belong to these families, and then what all that means. And so there's a lot of, I'm still early on in this, and there's just a lot of tests, figuring out what's going on.

[00:04:07] She discovers quickly that Ivy is a fixer; people come to her to solve problems, and so Tess doesn't really know exactly what that means, but she's just becoming very aware of the fact that Ivy knows how all these threads fit together and that Ivy is navigating these really complicated dynamics with high-profile people.

[00:04:30] So that's kind of where I am, and the story is just still getting accustomed to what's going on for Tess and this very drastic change that's happened in her life, and I'm really interested to see what goes on and how all those dynamics change for her over time. So again, that's Jennifer Lynn Barnes with the ruling class.

[00:04:53] And like I said, it's a re-release of a book that she wrote prior, II don't know yet what will happen.

[00:05:00] Jen: It's so good. I read that, and then it's a duology, so I did read the second book, but I just could not stop, and I love the show Scandal. And it reminded me of the early seasons of Scandal, which I just think are perfection and very much about the power dynamics in D.C., and yeah, the way that people use money and power to cover over things that they don't want the world to know.

[00:05:26] Yeah. I think it's brilliant.

[00:05:28] Ashley: Awesome. Yep. I'm curious to see what happens. What about you, Jen? What's something you're reading?

[00:05:32] Jen: So I just started Angeline Boulley's Sisters in the Wind, which, by the time this episode releases, will be out, I think it comes out on September 2nd. I have this through Net Galley, a digital ARC, and I think Boulley is just an amazing young adult author. So this is the third in a loose trilogy that started with Fire Keeper's Daughter, and then Warrior Girl Unearthed, both of which I loved.

[00:06:00] This one, I have not figured out all of the connections to those earlier books yet, but the main character is Lucy Smith, and she is living in a foster home, and in the opening scene, she is working in a diner. And it is clear that she has set up some protective systems around herself that have led to her isolation, but also to her feeling as if she is safe in some way.

[00:06:28] And there's a man named Mr. Jamison who approaches her and tells her that he thinks that she is part of the Ojibwe nation and wonders if she would be interested in pursuing this possibility. And that is not on her radar at all. So we find out that she was raised by a single father until he married the woman who was her stepmother, who had all kinds of quirks and issues.

[00:07:01] That became increasingly difficult for Lucy to navigate when her father became ill with colon cancer. Like I said, I'm still very early on, but she is going to be part of this tribe, I'm pretty sure, because this is the same nation that was part of Fire Keeper's daughter and Warrior Girl Unearthed, and yeah, so I'm just interested to see where the plot goes.

[00:07:22] What I've found that I really like about Bowie's work and that my students have liked as well, is the way that you have this really propulsive plot that is anchored in serious consideration of culture and history. And yeah, so already I'm seeing those threads start to emerge, though again, it is very early, so that is Angeline Boulley's Sisters in the Wind.

[00:07:46] Ashley: Oh, that sounds great, Jen. I haven't read since Fire Keeper's Daughter, and so you talking about them, I'm like, oh, I gotta get back to that series. Yeah, that sounds so good.

[00:07:53] Jen: Warrior Girl Unearthed is great. I had that one as a lit circle in my class, and the students who chose it just loved it. So, alright, well, we are going to transition now to our discussion of Fun Home. So this publisher's synopsis is meet Alison's father, a historic preservation expert and obsessive restorer of the family's Victorian home, a third-generation funeral home director, a high school English teacher, an isolated, distant parent, and a closeted homosexual who, as it turns out, is involved with his male students and a family babysitter.

[00:08:27] Which is a lot through narrative that is alternately heartbreaking and fiercely funny. We are drawn into a daughter's complex yearning for her father, and yet apart from a signed stint, dusting caskets at the family-owned funeral home, as Alison and her brothers call it, the relationship achieves its most intimate expression through the shared code of books.

[00:08:47] Alison comes out as homosexual in her late adolescence. All right, well, we will move on to our categories here. So, overall impressions are first, Ashley, what'd you think of this one?

[00:08:57] Ashley: Gosh, this is a brilliant memoir. I didn't know a lot about Bechdel, aside from the Bechdel test, which she is a part of, and so I was familiar in that regard, but I really didn't know a lot about her as an author, and I am just amazed by her. Her brilliance and also shown by her ability to dig in through an analytic perspective, like digging into her own life.

[00:09:29] And I think that's really hard to do. So I feel like she approaches this from. A deeply personal perspective, but also from a kind of removed and very literary perspective. And that is really interesting, particularly because it is also a graphic memoir. And so I think it's just really interesting to see how it's both so intimate and also so removed.

[00:09:54] And I think, yeah, that part really resonated for me. I thought it was really compelling and sad and, yeah, overall, like I, I really am glad I read it and see why it has gotten the acclaim it's gotten. What about you, Jen? What's your overall impression?

[00:10:09] Jen: Yeah, I really loved it as well. I had read it before, but it had been a long time, so I remembered only the vagueness of the outlines, and so I was really captivated by the way she's using these literary references to provide a context for her own understanding of her identity and relationship with her father and the rest of her family.

[00:10:32] It's been adapted into a musical, which yes, which, I would love to see, but I think that would be a really dark musical, and I'm not quite sure how that would work. So I'm actually more intrigued by that after having reread it than I was before. 'Cause before I was like, well, yeah, musicals work, but it's a dark book.

[00:10:51] So, yeah. Anyway, that's an aside. Bechdel is so smart, and she uses the graphic elements of the book so beautifully to tell her story, and yet the text is also sometimes associated with graphic novels or graphic memoirs. I have a hard time finding a quote for a quote to discuss because it's as much or more about the graphic part as it is about the text, but the text itself could stand on its own as well.

[00:11:16] And so I thought that was really an interesting experience when reading a graphic memoir. So yeah, I really loved it.

[00:11:23] All right, so what's one thing you wanna highlight that really worked for you?

[00:11:28] Ashley: I think something that really workedThere are two things I kinda wanna talk about, but one thing that really worked for me was the way that there is sort of a scrapbook component to this. I think. Again, deepens those layers. And so there's both her written commentary that, like you said, Jen could stand alone. Then there is the artistic commentary of her drawing all the things, but then there is this other layer of her writing in. Or, you know, demonstrating or capturing, I didn't research exactly the ways that some of that got transcribed. So like was she looking at those things and then making them very lifelike?

[00:12:09] But I mean, there's the parts where like it's clearly his handwriting or it's clearly like her, it seems like her sketch of the exact photo of that moment or whatever. And so I think that piece brought this really interesting authenticity to what is already a pretty complex text, and also positioned it in time, and I think that is really interesting.

[00:12:32] You know, just like thehandwritten component of it and like what his handwriting looked like and the way that, like, for me. Seeing that handwriting there is like, that is a generational handwriting also. And so, like those pieces of how we are part of this larger landscape, I think that worked really well in the way that she tells what is a very complex and really sad story.

[00:12:54] And so yeah, I'll go with that piece. I mean, like I said, I had several things that came up, I think it's a really rich text. There are a lot of things to think about, but that was something that really worked for me. What about you, Jen?

[00:13:03] Jen: Yeah, I thought that her use of literature to tell the story was so beautiful, but also fascinating. There's a remove there. That it's like if she can stand outside of herself to look at it as if it's a story, she can process it better, and also probably deal with the grief better.

[00:13:25] I think, or it allows her to deal with the grief period because she can get a little bit of distance and then when you see the way that her parents communicated with her, the letters back and forth about things that are very personal, you know, when she comes out and that results in these letters again, to which there's this remove that I found.

[00:13:49] I can't imagine talking to my kid that way, right? Like, but also you can see how this is the way she's been taught to think about life and who you are and who your parents are. And so she's doing what she has learned her whole life, which is to find a book that resonates and think about it that way. And I do a lot of that.

[00:14:09] I'm always finding books that help me to understand my life better or someone else's life better. I think that I feel absorbed in it rather than removed from it. So I thought that was a really interesting perspective I did not remember or expect, but I think it's brilliant. Oh my gosh.

[00:14:25] Just, you know, every new text that she finds that provides a way for her to understand this life that she's living and the life that her father lived, is just another layer to the complexity of her world.

[00:14:41] Ashley: Yeah, as you were talking, I was remembering, so that was really vivid. I wanna flip through and find it, but like again, the art, there are pages where the art stands alone. Like it could be its own. Masterpiece and the one that was coming to my mind was just that image of the house as an artist studio, and everybody is in their own very isolated space.

[00:15:02] And I think we see so much of that, of the way that you have these two very artistically inclined, high performing parents who don't seem to know how to interact with their children and then there's also the, again, like I think that this is positioned in time, you know, that there's like the way that children are supposed to be or not be, and there's that, societal expectation also that's like playing a role in the way that they relate to each other.

[00:15:33] But for sure, some of it has to do with the way that both of her parents relate to the world. That, yeah, and I agree with you that I just, from the start, you know, we see the mythological connections, but then we get into like Joyce and all of that. And I think, yeah, that ability to explore her sense of self and world, like how she connects to the world through the literature, is just really powerful.

[00:16:02] Jen: All right, so I wanna cheat and give two quotes. So if you wanna cheat and talk about something else that worked for you, we'll balance.

[00:16:10] Ashley: Oh my gosh. I mean, there's just so much to dig into here. I think something else that really worked for me was the way that she conveyed really shocking things in this very deadpan way, and I think it worked for me. I mean, as we have both indicated, I mean, this is a really dark book.

[00:16:30] Like I think it's impossible to read it and not feel for Bechdel at the center of this story, even though I feel sure that is not her intention and having written the memoir, but it is just sad. So I guess what was coming to my mind was when she first says about her dad and that he had been, I mean, I'll have to look for the quote, Jen.

[00:16:52] Do you know what I'm talking about? That's the first time she mentions it, where I was like, Oh my God,

[00:16:55] Jen: When it says he was sleeping with the teenage boys...

[00:16:59] Ashley: Yes.

[00:17:00] Jen: I think it's in that first chapter.

[00:17:02] Ashley: Like, so I think, you know, for example, like very early on there's this passage of everybody, she shows how everyone thinks that her father as this ideal person, and then she has this little commentary laid on top of this very austere image, and she said, but would an ideal husband and father have sex with teenage boys? And that's all she said right there. And I was like, oh, what? And so I think her ability to just really jar the reader, I mean, is effective. Like I just really was like. What, and then she goes on to say, like shortly after that, how she's so able to enumerate all his faults, but she can't seem to blame him for them, or I'm paraphrasing that one.

[00:17:49] But you know, it was like, I just think she does such an interesting job of showing how complicated it all is and how even in something where clearly, I mean, she says that and is egregious. I mean, it feels like a mic drop moment. And so we know that she knows that it is egregious. And yet throughout it, there is this endless desire to reconcile this relationship that we as the readers can see, which again might not be her intention in writing the story, but it is very true that you can see this as like attempt to sort it all out in a way that maybe is not something that can be sorted out.

[00:18:33] Jen: Yeah, and I think that shock that we feel certainly mirrors the shock that she felt. I can't imagine that call where her mother almost just casually drops this fact and tells her that he had slept with Roy, their babysitter, and you know, just recasting her vision of her whole childhood through this other lens.

[00:18:57] Yeah, it's really horrifying, but again, also so masterfully designed, but awful.

[00:19:05] Ashley: Yeah, I think she does a good job of showing the larger context and the pressure to conform and the ways that impact an individual. So while she's not excusing any of the choices that he makes, she also is making clear what was just not spoken of or acknowledged or certainly normalized at that time and how that then created, you know, again, I don't feel like she's trying to justify any of the horrific choices that he made, but there is this larger portrait being painted that makes it more complicated.

[00:19:44] Jen: Yeah. I kept thinking about the interaction he had with the boy. In the car that resulted in his hearing or trial, and wondering what the full story is, right? There's this vacuum around it that, yeah. So it is presumably about the alcohol, but why would his brother call the police immediately upon seeing him in his car, right?

[00:20:07] So there's something that has happened

[00:20:10] and that the brother has some knowledge. That caused him to call the police. And yeah, that made me think of the time that they were living in and of what would happen today if that happened, right? It would be very different in a positive way. It should have been very different.

[00:20:27] But yeah, that was interesting to consider as well because there was no acceptance, but then that no acceptance led to nobody wanting to talk about it, which meant that he was able to get away with it for longer.

[00:20:38] Ashley: That's right. Yeah, absolutely right. I mean, I think everything she said around that, that no one even dared to allege the real thing that people were concerned might have happened, or was the intention, even if it didn't happen, and how no one would even breathe a word of it. I mean, uh, he's grooming these boys, and again, at minimum, his wife knows. But you think that what the stakes are for her and for her children, like, so it's sort of like. No one, I didn't feel like Bechdel was trying to justify anything that he did, but it was clear also that she feels this really complicated feeling about it.

[00:21:17] And I thought also the way that she talks through, like you said about the letters were the way that they discussed her sexuality and her coming out as a lesbian and how, you know, she says several times how like her entire coming out experience was completely overshadowed by this other discovery that like opened the door to having to reconsider every single bit of her childhood and those trips that they had been on.

[00:21:44] I mean, oh my gosh. Like realizing that as an adult and then having to sort your way through that is just, I mean, I mean, really complicated.

[00:21:52] Jen: Well, I'll just say this book is banned in a lot of places and there are graphic images, right, of sex and of sexual situations, but also when you aren't willing to talk about these things, that is what sets up places in which it can happen.

[00:22:09] Ashley: And so, yeah, I just, my brain kept going around that, that at the time homosexuality was a hidden shame.

[00:22:19] Jen: And there's nothing shameful about it, but the way he's manifesting it is, and that needs to be talked about. So it doesn't happen to kids.

[00:22:29] Ashley: That's right. I think that Bechdel does that, of like showing this, I mean, it's tragic, like this tragic man who becomes predatory because all the positive outlets

.[00:22:42] are closed

[00:22:42] off to him, and therefore, he engages in these predatory behaviors.

[00:22:48] That, and then again, like I'm sure that her mother would have liked to leave him to, you know, I mean, she finally divorces him, but it's like then he's gonna lose his job. The family's going to lose their home. They're all gonna be publicly disgraced.

[00:23:02] She would be disgraced by, so I think, like you see how. The people who know, or at least suspect, are so bound up in this inability to speak up that these horrible things continue. And like you said about the trial, that should have been the end of it. And yet even then, he like got off, which again, for Bechdel, kind of like I felt relieved because I was like, oh, I mean, her entire life would've completely fallen apart.

[00:23:31] And again, through no fault of her own. It's really complicated. And I think exactly what you said, if like, if we're unwilling to discuss, then that's a real problem. And I mean for sure that's true with kids. Like I think, you know, there's all this stigma around talking to kids about, like. Anything, anything related to touching adults, to what's okay and not okay. Like, and I think people are trying more and more to break down those barriers, but I mean, even now, you know, there is like heated discussion about at what point to start talking to kids. And I mean, from my perspective, from when everything I've learned, the thing that protects them is to talk to them as soon as they can talk to start using very age-appropriate

[00:24:16] terms and understandings, and to start introducing those concepts because there is no age that's too early to try to keep them safe. And so I think like, the taboos on all of this are so ingrained in us that then like real damage happens by the unwillingness to like find our way through.

[00:24:37] Jen: Right. Well, and then you see her dad's panic when they're in New York. And is it John? I think it's John who goes out on his own...

[00:24:45] Ashley: Oh my gosh,

[00:24:45] Jen: And he knows what could happen because he has done it. I mean, not to a child that young, but still, and

[00:24:52] Ashley: to minors.

[00:24:53] Jen: Right. And so that was, and how did you know? It was just a chance that he felt weird in the situation, was able to get away, but that easily could have gone in a different direction.

[00:25:06] Ashley: Absolutely. Right, and again, the kids are not realizing that no one had talked to them. So then he goes out thinking it's totally fine to do that because no one had educated them about any part of it. About being in a city, about taking care of themselves, about how dangerous it is to be on your own for a million reasons.

[00:25:24] But yeah, absolutely. Like, I felt like there's so much silence, and we see the silence in her family and how oppressive it is, but then there's a larger cultural silence happening also.

[00:25:36] Jen: All right. Well, let's move on to quotes. Ashley, what's a quote that you would like to discuss?

[00:25:41] Ashley: Like you said, Jen, I felt like there were a lot. That I could choose. I also told Jen right before we recorded that, like, it's been a long time since I read a book where there were vocabulary words that I did not know. Bechdel's vocabulary is so robust that there were at least two times, and I was like, I do not in fact know that word.

[00:25:58] So that was humbling. But anyway, this one does not have any of that, but I just, that was on my mind when I was thinking about how just like beautiful the language is and all the illusions. I mean, it just is really well done. Anyway, the quote I wanted to share is "Dad's death was not a new catastrophe, but an old one that had been unfolding very slowly for a long time." I think once we find out what happened when her dad died and her conviction. He meant to step in front of the truck, which we don't know, and she knows that we don't know., She paints a convincing picture of why she believes that this was not.

[00:26:42] You know, just an accident, which is certainly how it was portrayed, and I mean, for all intents and purposes, all they could prove was that it was an accident. And yet she feels so sure that he had intent. And so I think why that quote really resonated for me with a larger masterpiece of the book is just that she is unfolding how all of this. Suppression of his identity, the choices that he made, because he did not choose a healthy homosexual relationship, which would have resulted in a very different artistic life than the one he wound up in, which was so rigid, so focused, so obsessed with perfection. So trapped that then he, you know, all the things we just talked about, he engages in these predatory behaviors.

[00:27:29] Surely, again, we don't know, but we can presume that there is some self-judgment and self-hatred that is coming from this situation. And then he has to face the fact that finally his wife is leaving him and that his children are growing up and don't need him. And so then we just see this. I just thought it was really powerful.

[00:27:54] It's not a new catastrophe, but an old one, and I just was like, I mean that's, it is like this really catastrophic and sudden thing happens, but also at the same time, at least for Bechdel's whole life, but really for like so much of her father's life, it is this like movement toward this like inevitable end is how she creates it in the story.

[00:28:16] And I just think like she does that really powerfully, and it's really dark and it's really sad. And I think part of what she's demonstrating is the stakes.

[00:28:24] Jen: Mm-hmm. Yeah, because she references Greek stories throughout and that idea of fate, right? That this was a fate that had just been waiting for him. She builds to that so beautifully, and yet it is so tragic and so, you know, this fatal flaw that he had. It's just the layers of illusions, the tragic hero, and it all comes together so beautifully, and yet none of that beauty is able to counteract the true tragedy that she is trying to work through.

[00:28:55] Ashley: Yeah, I feel like so much of it, like I said, I mean, I don't think she's trying to make excuses for him, but she is trying to reconcile something that we, as the reader, can see is like irreconcilable.

[00:29:05] What about you, Jen? What's the quote you wanted to share, or I think you said you were gonna share two?

[00:29:09] Jen: I am gonna share two. One will be short, but I just wanted to share it. The one I wanted to focus on is "not only were we inverts, we were inversions of one another, and she reveals that at one point, homosexuals were called inverts. And so I thought that the way she sets up these echoes, these parallels of the

[00:29:29] way, she comes out, the way she converses with her parents about it with her dad, they're amazing foils because there are some ways that they're similar. We see that each is drawn to traditional gender expressions of the opposite gender, and she has that moment where she has the two pictures side by side, of them looking.

[00:29:50] Like the opposite, the traditional expression of the opposite gender, and yet they look so much like each other, and when they are both looking at these men and the way that they're dressed, their attraction to that is for different reasons. I just thought that was such an interesting thread running through the book, and she is working to have a very positive homosexual identity in contrast to the one her father had.

[00:30:17] And you think about the generational changes that have occurred, and when he sort of says, you know, he doesn't say it outright, but expresses regret for the way he's lived his life and the ways he's chosen not to express who he really is. It's so heartbreaking to think that if he had been born a generation later, would things have been different?

[00:30:38] Would his life have been as tragic, or would he have been able to find the same sort of positive expression of identity and to build the same kinds of positive relationships that she was able to have? So I just thought that the idea of being inversions of one another was such a powerful way to consider both the influence of who he had on her before she knew his truth.

[00:31:00] And then after, because of course, he shaped who she was, but then once she knows the truth beneath it, she sees that shaping as being. Very different. Yeah, again, everything about this book is so complex and so layered, but I thought that one was really powerful.

[00:31:15] Ashley: Yeah, I think about, again, she kind of sees in a new light, those images of him wanting her to wear that little sailor dress, and you know, like you have the perfect lace, all of that is seen so differently once she knows this truth about him.

[00:31:33], and I think the other piece that I thought was really interesting was when she's trying to envision a more positive

[00:31:40] Life for her dad was this awareness of like, then she might not exist. And so I think there is this element of the inability to take ourselves out of a story, and how, of course, her very existence hinges upon the fact that he married a woman and had children with her, even though he clearly seemed to already know that he was homosexual.

[00:32:07] And I also loved her exploration of like, she's just so aware of her own role in all of the storytelling. So even with like, she talks about trying to cast him as specifically homosexual and not bisexual, which of course he could have been. And so I think just this, like, you know, that she recognizes that

.[00:32:28] sexuality is far more complex, and that she shouldn't be just like casting him into this very narrow box, but then she is trying to make sense based on her own understanding of herself. She's trying to make sense of his truth. And so I just thought, yeah, all of that is just, I mean, like you said, it's just really complicated, and it's interesting to see her so thoughtfully unpacking all of that.

[00:32:53] Jen: Yeah, the other quotation I wanted to share is actually from the acknowledgements, and she says, "thanks to Helen Christian and John Bechdel for not trying to stop me from writing this book." And I just thought, I had not really thought of that through the book, while reading the book, because I was so immersed in it.

[00:33:08] But then, yeah, you get to the end and you think about the difficulty for her. In digging through this very painful experience, but then for her family as well, and they're not necessarily getting the same benefit that she is from working through her own identity for them. Yeah. I just thought, wow, the vulnerability and the bravery needed to do something like that or to have that done within your family is astonishing.

[00:33:36] So I just wanted to note that really hit hard when I saw that in the acknowledgements.

[00:33:43] Ashley: Yeah, absolutely. Like for all of them, there's still a lot at stake in telling this truth.

[00:33:49] Jen: Yeah. All right. Well, it is time for our pairings. Ashley, which one are you recommending?

[00:33:55] Ashley: I wanted to share, Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant, which is written by, and it is also a graphic memoir, so it's by Roz Chast and this one. There are a lot of things that are very different, but then there are a lot of things that really were.

[00:34:10] I thought of it a lot when I was reading this because there's a lot that's similar about navigating aging and your relationship to your parents. And so this one is very much about, er. I mean, and similarly, like the parts are funny, but also somber. And so she is depicting her journey as an only child with her aging parents, who are still at the beginning of the memoir.

[00:34:41] They're still living by themselves. And I think they're in their nineties by the time she is trying to like face this inevitable need to like help them make a change so that, you know, that so that she can help take care of them. What I think is similar is just her unpacking her own stuff, her own baggage, and then also like unpacking how she navigates her relationship with her parents and then coming to see them in a different light as she navigates all of this.

[00:35:09] I think similarly to Fun Home, there are parts that are really distinct to their situation, and then there are just other like universal truths of, you know, in the natural order of things, children are going to lose their parents, and they are gonna have to navigate that process.

[00:35:28] And so I think, you know, she kind of talks early on about how, basically her, which I really relate to, but basically her approach is like denial, avoidance, you know, just trying hard not to confront this situation because it is really hard. It is then that her mom falls, and, you know, she climbs up on a ladder and she falls, and it forces this unpacking of having to do something about their situation, and then.

[00:35:56] She comes to understand more and more how much her dad, who is experiencing dementia, is relying on her mom. There's just a lot going on there. But again, there are just these universal parts that I think both memoirs really invite the reader to look at those relationships that we all have, these like familial bonds,s and like a portrait of that, I think.

[00:36:20], and so that was why I thought there were other books that came to mind for me as well. And this one, there are parts of it that are really heavy, but I did not find it as heavy. Dark or as heavy as black toes. But I do think it's similar in some ways, as far as like, I love the graphic pieces, and then the layering of those pieces, I thought were similar.

[00:36:40] and it was just a really well-done memoir. So again, that Roz Chast, can't we talk about something more pleasant?

[00:36:48] Jen: That one has been on my list for a long time. I really need to read it.

[00:36:51] Ashley: I think you'd really like it, Jen. We both like to have some sandwiching happening of raising our children and taking care of aging parents, and so, you know, I think there are some things that might feel a little closer to home than you want them to be, but it is like I said, it is funny and I appreciated that.

[00:37:09] Just sort of the laugh-out-loud parts of it. So what about you, Jen? What's your pairing?

[00:37:13] Jen: I'm going to pair this with Laura Gao's Messy Roots, a graphic memoir of a Wuhanese American, and we actually covered this for Book club. Book club, or buddy read.

[00:37:25] Ashley: I believe we did a book club on it. I think we might have had it for Buddy Read as well, since it is young adult, but I think we did actually do a book club.

[00:37:31] Jen: I think we did too. Okay. We actually covered this in book club back in 2022, which is when it was published.

[00:37:37] And GAO is, well, the parallels are obvious, right? First in graphic memoir, but Gao was born in Wuhan, China, and her family immigrated to the United States when she was quite young. And so part of the book is her working through her identity as someone who, in some way, is so attached to that heritage, and in other ways, she really wants to be what she considers a true American.

[00:38:07] So that's one part of the book. And then she does come out as queer when she's in college, and so she talks about that experience. Now her experience is quite different from Bechdel's, but I do think just that sense of working through one's identity and how you come to understand who you are when you don't know from a very young age, I thought was really powerful.

[00:38:30] Part of it was definitely dealing with a pandemic and the implications for someone from Wuhan when there was a lot of ugliness surrounding people's language and their approach to where the virus came from and how it had invaded America from Wuhan that she deals with in a really, powerful, really honest, really vulnerable way.

[00:38:49] So that is Laura Gao, Messy Roots, a graphic memoir of a Wuhanese American.

[00:38:56] Ashley: Yeah, I love that one, Jen. I'm glad you shared that 'cause I hadn't thought a lot about it recently, but it is such a powerful.

[00:39:02] Memoir and yeah, timely as far as like sweeping generalizations that people make, I think it's easy now that some of that has passed to sweep over the blaming that was happening and some of that early on in the pandemic, but yeah, to remember the acuteness of some of that as things were unfolding.

[00:39:24] Yeah, that's important.

[00:39:25] Jen: Alright, well, we are going to close our episode with our Unabridged favorites. Ashley, I think we're doing a bit of a swap this time, 'cause usually I talk about media and you talk about something else. But what is your favorite that you would like to share?

[00:39:37] Ashley: Yes. I feel like I never have any shows or anything. Jen and I, right before we record, I'm always like, oh my gosh, what am I gonna talk about? I mostly watch Bob's Burgers or occasionally some other animated show. And then, and nothing else kind of on, on repeat. But I have started one recently, which stars Ted Danson Stars in, but is Man On The Inside.

[00:39:59] I actually think it's appropriate for us to talk about like aging people and just the journey of aging, but anyway, in this one, it is set in a retirement community, and Ted Danson gets selected to help, a private investigator to try to solve these crimes that are happening at the retirement community.

[00:40:24] And I think. What I'm loving about it is that I feel like Michael Sure is involved in this one, too. Is that right, Jen? Okay. So, I loved The Good Place. I really like the things that Michael Sore does, and I love Ted Danson, and I just think what I like about it is how complex the characters are.

[00:40:42] think a lot of times when we see senior citizens in stories. They are stereotypes, they're very flawed, and here we really see nuanced characters who've lived full lives and who also are experiencing the journey of aging. And I think that part is really interesting. It's also just like laugh-out-loud funny, and it is relatable.

[00:41:02] So, yeah, so far I'm really enjoying that. It's been a favorite.

[00:41:05] Jen: I love that show so much, a nd it's one of those that can, I would be laughing so loudly, and then I would be sobbing so uncontrollably. It's the full spectrum of human emotion, but it's so, so good.

[00:41:18] Ashley: I did tell Jen before we recorded. I was like, we got to, I don't know. Maybe episode six or seven or something. And it was sad. And of course, I mean, as the premise that I just said suggests, there are going to be hard things; aging is hard. And yet I was like, uh-hoh, I might be out on this one because I can read challenging and sad things all the time.

[00:41:40] With shows, I really have a very limited ability to \stretch, but I have loved it so far, and I think it's sweet to just put on the screen some of the harder parts. So, yeah, that makes sense about the uncontrollable sobbing. What about you, Jen? What's your favorite?

[00:41:58] Jen: So this is something I normally would not recommend. So I have some caveats, but Facebook groups and I don't love Facebook. I think we've all experienced the ways the algorithm has changed, and it's not always a pleasant place to be. But my older son, my first, moved to college this fall, and I found some really great Facebook groups that helped both with just the logistics of like what does he need for his room, and also with some of the emotional aspects.

[00:42:28] You know, it's an emotional thing, and some of the things that I needed to consider about the ways I was going to approach him moving out. So I don't love every Facebook group, and I don't love Facebook as a whole, but if you find your niche and if you find the right groups, I think that they can be incredibly helpful.

[00:42:46] Ashley: Yeah, when I saw that on the list, I was like, oh my gosh, I really get that because I don't use it at all. Like, personally, I probably have posted like 20 times total or something, you know? So I really don't post on there. I don't even have that app, really, but I use it.

[00:43:02] because in the podcasting space, I don't know anyone locally. I mean, I've made more connections recently, but still, I don't know anyone who is like me in the production and post-production world. And so, like that is where I go for the professionals who do the thing that I do, because otherwise I would not know anyone who, you know, locally, I don't know anybody who.

[00:43:21] The work that I do now. So I really appreciated that when I have technical problems, that is where I go because people will help. And also when I had my breast cancer diagnosis, same that you're describing, Jen, where like a very specific circumstance happens to lots of people and yet not necessarily in your local, in your friend group, or your family members, nobody's necessarily going through that particular thing at the time that you are.

[00:43:47] And so, yeah, so powerful. Like a lot of the things I learned about what to advocate for myself, what to ask for, and certainly like I chose flat closure, and that was something I never would've chosen if I had not read other people sharing why they chose that and how it had been after they made that decision.

[00:44:05] So yeah, for me, I me, that was literally life changing, to have that like global support. And so I think that is something that you can really get some good out of. There are just some things about social media that really are amazing.

[00:44:17] Jen: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Alright, everyone, well, thank you so much for listening. I will say we're not having our book club discussion until Monday after this episode releases. So if you'd like to join. Let us know. And if you listen to this whole thing, sorry for the spoilers, but it's fast to read, so if you haven't read it yet and you wanna read it before Monday, you would definitely have time.

[00:44:38] So, yeah. Thanks so much for listening. We'd love to know what you thought. A fun home. Take care.

[00:44:43] Jen: Do you have comments or opinions about what you heard today? We'd love to hear them. You can find us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @unabridgedpod or on the web at unabridgedpod.com for ways to support us to get more involved. You can sign up for our newsletter. Join a Buddy Read or become an ambassador.

[00:45:02] Thanks for listening to Unabridged.

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