Better Days

In the beginning of this book, precious has very low self-esteem and self-concept. This can be blamed on a few reasons; her mother’s physical and mental abuse, her father’s sexual abuse (rape), and the lack of care that outsiders such as her teachers, neighbors and even family give her. She is stranded without a paddle up until she meets Ms. Rain who helps her self-esteem and self-concept grow tremendously. She teaches her that she can do anything if she believes in herself and that the truth will free her. Precious had been living in denial for most of her life, and now that she has this loving and warm atmosphere in Ms. Rain's class, she finally realizes how precious she really is.

I thought it was very interesting for her to describe herself as a "vampire" or "invisible". There are many times when she is on her way to do something productive and she gets distracted by her disturbing past. "For me this muffin' new. There has always been something wrong wif the tesess. These tesses paint a picture of me wif no brain. The tesses paint a picture of me an' my muver- my whole family, we more than dumb, we invisible.....They vampires. They eats, drinks, wear clothes, talks, fucks, and stuff but when you git right down to it they don't exist." She is not only describing herself as worthless, but her whole family as worthless because all they do is hurt her in some way; never have they been a positive support system that she obviously needed.

Precious stated that all she did during her school years was just "get by" and sit in the back of the classroom. It was evident that once she attended Ms. Rain’s class that she didn't even know how to read. This class even gives her faith in her unborn child. It was heartwarming to find that this time around she really did want to care for her child and make sure it had a better life than her. "Important to read to baby after it's born. Important to have colors hanging from them wall. Listen baby, I puts my hand on my stomach, breathe deep. Listen baby (I writes in my notebook): She is talking to her baby and making a connection with him which she probably would have never done before this new accepting experience in Ms. Rains classroom

It's obvious that Precious has gone through hell and back, but up to this point in the book, it seems as though she is willing to turn it all around for the sake of her and her children. She wants to raise them better than she was raised as a child. She wants to push.

"He was there to catch me when I leapt"

Throughout this novel, Alison really vocalizes how much she dislikes her father in various ways, but I can't help to wonder if everything she was saying was just to cover up how much she really did care about him. Was this book based on an over exaggerated opinion? Yes, he made Alison and her siblings work hard around the house and had little time for fun and games, but no parent is perfect, and in my view, he was a great father. He built strong work ethic for his children and yes, he was stern but sometimes it's needed for a home to be run accordingly.

Alison’s father may have been controlling, but it was only because he cared for her. He wanted for her what he felt like he never had. On pages 22 and 23, Bechdel conveys a sense of kindness in her father. The pictures show him giving her a bath and letting her take the wheel of the lawn mower and she then states, "Although I'm good at enumerating my father’s flaws, it's hard for me to sustain much anger at him. I expect this partly because he's dead, and partly because the bar is lower for fathers than for mothers." There are those fathers that aren't even there for their daughters. I could see why one would be hostile towards someone who was never there for them, but the mere fact that her father put great effort for her shows that he isn't so bad after all.

I also caught on as I read through this book, that her mother is rarely mentioned or around. It seems to me that her father played a big part in her life which is maybe why she blames a lot of things on him. While talking to a friend at college, she laughs at the fact that her father is dead. “Dad left no note. After the funeral, life pretty much resumed its course. They say grief takes many forms, including the absence of grief."  I personally believe that her laugh is nervousness and hides the fact that she really did love her father. Some people react the complete opposite way they're "supposed" to act when something tragic happens. However, I know Alison loved and trusted her father than she ever portrayed it through the whole book according to one little line on the very last page that read, "But in the tricky reverse narration that impels our entwined stories, he was there to catch me when I leapt."

Like father like daughter

As much as Alison despises her father, I can't help but to realize how similar she is to him. She seems to discover more and more about her father’s secrets in chapter three. Her mother reveals to her events that had taken place even before she was born, which helps her as well as the reader to better understand why her father is the way he is.
Once Alison wrote a letter home four months prior to her father’s death about "coming out", her mother admitted that her father too was homosexual or, bisexual and that he had had affairs with men while they were married. This came as a surprise to Alison, but also helped her to put the pieces together. Her and her father both communicated via letters because it was much easier than showing emotion in person; another similarity they have. Throughout the book, he had always been infatuated with certain books that had homosexuality hidden in the pages (or how he perceived these books). Such as The Great Gatsby he always talked so dearly about the male author. Like her father, Alison took pleasure in reading books about homosexuality. In college she was in the library almost every day understanding more and more that homosexuality wasn't just about physicality, but about the mentality. "My realization at nineteen that I was a lesbian came about in a manner consistent with my bookish upbringing. A revelation not of the flesh, but of the mind."
These thoughts lead her to believe that her father was never really physically interested in her mother, but just the idea of having a "normal" life. Even so, their lives never really turned out the way they had imagined. "I speculate on what attracted my father more--the role, the actress, or my mother herself." Although Alison refuses to believe that she is anything like her heartless father, she is subliminally playing out her father’s life.

A mystery

In the second chapter of "Fun Home" it is labeled "A Happy Death “and according to the first chapter, I could see why Alison believed it was happy. She was much older when her father died (in her college years) and seemed as though she never really made that attachment to him. She looked very unphased in the first few pages at the funeral about his death. It was sudden and somewhat expected by Alison. He was allegedly hit by a truck but Alison believed that he planned it out to happen according to his past actions and clues throughout her childhood.

She remembers sneaking peaks of books that he had highlighted and most of the lines were clues to his death and why he might have committed suicide. "He discovered the cruel paradoxy by which we always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love-first to their advantage, then to our disadvantage"...."A fitting epitaph for my parents marriage" At the time of his death, Alison’s parents were getting a divorce and I believe that Alison foresaw this event taking place. Another clue for her was his head stone when he died; she had remembered the shape of it when he described it to her one day when she was younger. "He had an obelisk collection, in fact, and his prize specimen was one in knee-high jade that propped open the door to his library." It's ironic that he used it as his tombstone when he died because he tells Alison that it symbolizes life.

She tells her mother when she arrives home "I think it was something he always meant to do." Meaning, she had observed her father so much even though she wanted nothing to do with him. It goes to show you that maybe she really did love her father and maybe she just wanted a little attention from him or a closer and stronger relationship with him. Although if you look back, he was always in her life up until that point, just not in the way she wanted him to be. It was very hard for her to figure out her dad; to her he will always be a mystery.

Passion

In the book "Fun Home", the author, Alison Bechdel writes her biography through a comic strip. I've never read a book quite like this. It is indeed a novel that has just as much content to read as any other but it is so helpful that there are pictures on every page! (I wish every book were like this). I started to read this book on the plane to South Carolina and surprisingly couldn't put it down. I was giggling next to a complete stranger at the mere irony of the book. At first, it seemed to be a comedy about a family from the sixties, but as I read further I realized that it was a tragedy wrapped into a comedy. Bechdel describes her childhood in a very frustrating way, yet adds small dialogues to make the reader understand that although she didn't feel that her childhood was the best, she realizes the reader can relate to her own family. It's the only family she's got so she embraced even the bad parts. She especially emphasizes on her father...

The first chapter of the book was most interesting to me because it was the perspective of a daughter about her father, so I could relate in a way. Alison’s father was always around, but he was always concerned about other things besides the children. He put the kids to work in the house all the time and everything had to be in order and "just right" or he wouldn't be happy. Although his job didn't revolve around houses, he had somewhat of an obsession with rebuilding the house they lived in that was made in the 1800's. Her dad was determined to refurnish the house to it's best and even better than it was built. "In this regard, it was like being raised not by Jimmy but by Martha Stewart." The kids never really got time to spend with their father unless it was labor around the house.

Although Bechdel describes her life in the first chapter as hard work and un loved, she also realized when her father was caring. "Sometimes, when things were going well, I think my father actually enjoyed having a family." But then she second-guesses her statement with a comic relief, "Or at least, the air of authenticity we lent to his exhibit. A sort of still life with children." (As the kids sat by the Christmas tree they had been working to put up for him). "He could conjure an entire, finished period interior from a paint chip"(Alison holding up a ruler for her father to see if something is level) "my arms falling off" This is just another example of the many humorous remarks Bechdel uses to cover up her sadness about her childhood. We all do this to not only relate to others but to mask what we truly feel.

Page turner

 By the end of the novel, do you get used to Alvarez’s style? Why did she choose
this style? Does it work? Is she able to get you to finish reading the book even
though you know the ending? What does she focus on instead and why?

At first this book was very hard to understand because I felt as though it was a bit scattered with it's ideas, thoughts and especially characters. Her writing was easy to understand after the first few pages of Dede's "third person" monologue because it started to unravel the meaning behind the story.... her sisters' death. After reading Dede's chapter, reading the other girls voices became a little harder because it was a new narrator and new writing. I love how Julia Alvarez can be so versatile in her writing by taking each of the characters voice. Alvarez's style worked out perfectly after I read through the first four chapters. It was much easier to determine the four sisters from each other.

I'd like to believe that Alvarez used this style to help the reader get a better sense of each girl and the actual events that took place and how each girl reacted and perceived them. For example, there is a huge difference between perceptions of life according to their experiences; the youngest sister, Maria Theresa and the oldest, Patria are prime examples of this. After Patrias husband Jamito left her because she had met with the revolutionary priest, she was devastated. "That first day was the hardest. I was crazy with grief, all right. When Dede and Tono walked me into the house, all I wanted to do was lie down and die...I got up from my bed ready to set up housekeeping at Mama's" Here, Patria is distressed and knows the hardships of life, but still takes on the "daily grind" When Maria Theresa describes the hard ships of being locked away, she describes her devastation in a different way, a less mature way describing how she's uncomfortable. "After you lose your fear, the hardest thing here is the lack of beauty. There's no music to listen to, no good smells, ever, nothing pretty to look at." She's more concerned about material things and believes if she doesn't feel comfortable, the "world will end" where Patria has had something horrible happen to her and still moves on with life. With this difference of character, you can imagine how many “sides” of the story there are.

Although I knew the ending to this story, Alvarez keeps you hooked with the different characters. I was never bored reading this book because for every chapter, there was a different voice, it's as if I knew the sisters as well as if they were my own. Every sister told a different version of the suspense and as I read on, the story replayed in a different perspective, which is what helped this book to be so successful.

Dede's Time Line

-Born in 1925
-Private school around the age of 13 with her sisters
-Met Lio when Minerva and Dede play volleyball one day (age 16 or 17)
-Lio left when he went into exile
-Engaged and married Jamito
-Goes to ball with father, sisters and husbands
-Father was arrested for protecting Minerva-
-Father dies 1953
-Has child (three total)
-Bankrupcy
-Sisters approach Dede's cause (Dede goes to revolutionary priest, husband finds out and leaves with children because he didn't want to get involved with the revolutionary causes.
-Arrests are made by the government-go to jail
-Jamito and Dede try to bail the arrested people out of jail- Dede then notices that she will always be involved with the revolutionary causes because her SISTERS are involved....a.k.a. (she is part of them)
-3 sisters die on November 25th, 1960
-Dede sets up a memorial house and open interviews in commemoration of her sisters- after their death-1994 Interview (1st chapter)