Reviews tagging 'Child abuse'

Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

50 reviews

twinsinparadise's review against another edition

challenging informative reflective slow-paced

4.5

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Infidelity, Toxic relationship, Homophobia, Death of parent, and Grief

Minor: Alcohol and Child abuse

m0_x13's review against another edition

emotional reflective sad medium-paced

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Emotional abuse, Physical abuse, Mental illness, Death, Grief, Infidelity, Pedophilia, Death of parent, and Child abuse

Moderate: Self harm, Suicide, and Homophobia

mollmccaff's review against another edition

dark emotional funny hopeful reflective fast-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death and Death of parent

Moderate: Pedophilia, Medical content, Adult/minor relationship, Sexual content, Child abuse, Emotional abuse, Outing, Homophobia, and Grief

Minor: Alcohol and Mental illness

saucy_bookdragon's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

 

Written by the creator of the often misunderstood Bechdel Test, Alison Bechdel, Fun Home is a graphic memoir that explores the life of Bechdel, mainly her complicated relationship to her father. Right after she came out to her parents as a lesbian, she learned her father was queer and then he died.

I had to read this for a college class and was glad I got to study something so gay. It was a sad memoir that I’d recommend to people looking for literature that specifically explores queerness, less-than-ideal-familial relationships, and mental health, all in depth. I found the relationship between Bechdel and her father to be fascinating as he wasn’t a good person, but he struggled with a lot of stuff similar to Alison with mental health and homophobia so they had a unique connection. This leads to a complicated grieving process that this memoir explores. It’s also nice to know who Alison Bechdel is when participating in Bechdel Test discourse (the Bechdel Test is a sapphic test, not a feminist one).

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Medical content, Emotional abuse, Car accident, Child abuse, Death of parent, and Death

Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Homophobia, and Lesbophobia

casdelvo's review against another edition

emotional hopeful reflective medium-paced

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Mental illness, Child abuse, and Adult/minor relationship

Moderate: Excrement, Lesbophobia, Homophobia, and Sexual content

Minor: Drug use, Domestic abuse, Death of parent, and Suicide

readandfindout's review against another edition

reflective sad medium-paced

3.0

Style/writing: 3 stars
Themes: 4 stars 
Perspective: 2.5 stars (I have really complicated feelings because of how the adult-minor relationships were never really addressed in the narrative?)
Art: 3 stars

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Toxic friendship, Death, Car accident, Emotional abuse, and Death of parent

Moderate: Suicide, Homophobia, Pedophilia, Domestic abuse, Adult/minor relationship, Mental illness, Grief, Infidelity, Child abuse, and Lesbophobia

ha1yan's review against another edition

emotional slow-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Suicide, Homophobia, Lesbophobia, Car accident, and Death of parent

Moderate: Pedophilia and Mental illness

A few panels with dead bodies in an embalming room. One of the bodies is severely injured in the chest (could count as body horror-ish)

aardwyrm's review against another edition

emotional funny reflective sad slow-paced

4.0

A strangely domestic, disarmingly frank piece that manages to be narratively inventive without sacrificing a bit of authenticity to contrivance. What are you supposed to say when you're late to a classic?

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Alcohol, Child abuse, Death of parent, Domestic abuse, Homophobia, and Suicide

rsmry's review against another edition

reflective medium-paced

5.0

Sooooo well written wow! Very clever in how she layered anecdotes and wove together stories. Really enjoyed the style of her drawings as well, with the washes in different saturations. The reflections on her identity, her father's identity, her relationship with him, and how their sexualities changed their relationships with gender were incredibly well written. The whole narrative has a reflective and often nostalgic quality that I connected with despite not sharing many similarities with Bechdel or her family. I guess it's more like relating to the way her thoughts flow? Or maybe she just did a good job capturing the feeling of reflecting on one's childhood. Idk.

One criticism I have is that she never explicitly called her father a pedophile. I know a lot of things, like his abuse of his family members, is explicit in the drawings but less severe sounding in the text, and it's a great writing tool to show the audience the reality of her childhood while talking around the issue in text, emphasizing her inherited struggle in talking to/about her family. But in the context of a society that ignores/dismisses pedophilia a little too often, I think being explicit about using a word we find so repulsive and connecting it to his actions is important. 

And one specific note: on page 108 she kind of sets up two options for herself had she been part of her father's generation -- "Would I have had the guts to be one of those Eisenhower-era butches? Or would I have married and sought succor from my high school students?" 

Though phrasing it like these were her two options makes sense given that the novel is reflecting on and drawing comparisons between her and her father's lives, this felt jarring when I read it because it considers pedophilia so casually, and the either/or phrasing of those two panels poses these hypotheticals as the only two options. I'm uncomfortable with how this associates closeted homosexuality with pedophilia given the history of homophobes painting queer people as sexually perverse people who prey on children.

Although pedophilia is a weighty topic, I think these are relatively small criticisms -- like, she definitely doesn't paint her father's actions in a good light. Overall she covered complicated topics and complicated relationships really well.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Pedophilia, Child abuse, and Domestic abuse

marthadude's review against another edition

dark emotional funny reflective slow-paced

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Car accident, Death of parent, Death, Infidelity, Suicide, Toxic relationship, Pedophilia, Outing, Mental illness, Lesbophobia, Homophobia, Emotional abuse, and Grief

Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Alcohol, Sexual content, and Child abuse

Minor: Domestic abuse, Religious bigotry, and Sexism