Her most recent book, The Secret to Superhuman Strength (May 2021), continues her investigation of the relationship between inside and outside, in this case the outside where she skis, bikes, hikes, and wanders in pursuit of fitness and, incidentally, self-transcendence.Īlison’s comics have appeared in The New Yorker, Slate, McSweeney’s, The New York Times Book Review, and Granta. Her 2012 memoir Are You My Mother? A Comic Drama delved into not just her relationship with her own mother, but the theories of the 20th century British psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott. In her work, Bechdel is preoccupied with the overlap of the political and the personal spheres, the relationship of the self to the world outside. It opened on Broadway at the Circle in the Square Theater on April 19, 2015, and won five Tony Awards, including “Best Musical.” It was adapted into a musical by the playwright Lisa Kron and the composer Jeanine Tesori. Time magazine named it the Best Book of 2006. In 2006 she published Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic. The award-winning generational chronicle has been called “one of the pre-eminent oeuvres in the comics genre, period.” ( Ms. And her more recent, darkly humorous graphic memoirs about her family have forged an unlikely intimacy with an even wider range of readers.īechdel self-syndicated Dykes to Watch Out For for twenty-five years, from 1983 to 2008. Alison Bechdel’s comic strip Dykes To Watch Out For became a countercultural institution among lesbians and discerning non-lesbians all over the planet.

Alison bechdel books