by Mo*
Anyone with literary inclinations awaits the announcements of the MacArthur Genius Awards each year with much excitement and a little envy. Who, in a moment of assessing one’s own “genius,” hasn’t mentally paid off their student loans and bought new shoes and a modest three-bedroom home with their imaginary MacArthur grant?
I was especially excited to see that one of my favorite writers and cartoonists, Alison Bechdel, author of the gorgeously rendered graphic memoirs Fun Home and Are You My Mother? was among this year’s honorees. Years ago, as a student at Smith College (where Alison’s professional archives are now housed), I pored over every panel of her legendary comic Dykes to Watch Out For, entranced by the complexity of the lives of her fictional lesbian community, how she deftly combined humor and tragedy, all while maintaining an important cultural chronicle of American lesbian life in the 1980s and 1990s. (the DTWOF archive remains online and should rightfully consume a great portion of your free time.) Bechdel ended the saga of Mo, Clarice, Toni, and the gang in 2008, and I still wonder how Mo is doing with her library career, where Raffi went to college, if Cynthia is still saving herself for marriage, if Toni and Gloria ever got together, and what Stewart might have written about President Obama on his blog. Bechdel’s characters still feel like real people to me all these years later.
The conclusion of Dykes to Watch Out For was necessary to bring to the world Bechdel’s two masterpieces, which our own Ben chose for last year’s BookPeople 100:
“Graphic novels are great for the juxtaposition of images and text, and this pair is no different, but what makes these books so powerful is the intimacy. Bechdel’s strip, Dykes to Watch Out For, was community oriented and politically-engaged. Her first and second book depart from this, plunging into Bechdel’s own life and memory of it. It is a look at a time past, dealing with sexuality, gender, death, and how we can inhabit the same physical space and overlapping biology in such distinct ways. For me, these two books are inseparable from one another. Are You My Mother? takes on a more intellectual and controlled approach, which, perhaps, is why Fun Home will always have a special place in my heart. The final panel of Fun Home, a young Bechdel leaping towards her father’s arms in the pool, still gives me shivers.”
Thank you, MacArthur Foundation, for recognizing the shivers-producing work of Alison Bechdel.
*Not her alter-ego character Mo.
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