Secrets in the family Fun Home
COVER STORY / Alison Bechdel outs her dad

Denise Sheppard / Xtra West / Wednesday, June 07, 2006

	THE COST OF INTERNALIZED SHAME: 'My entire adult life and career has been my reaction to my father's life,' says cartoonist Alison Bechdel. (Greg Martin photo)

For more than 20 years, Alison Bechdel has been the pen behind the wildly popular comic strip, Dykes to Watch Out For. Part political activist, part social commentator and part humorist, Bechdel has created a whole community of dykes, trans folk and the occasional het character and charted their lives and loves through innumerable affairs, aspirations and American administrations.

So you would think that a bit of her personal life has shone through the pages of her work.

Not entirely, but that is about to change.

With the release of her candid new book, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, Bechdel has finally opened up a lifetime of her secrets for all to see...