The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Star light, star bright… I wish to own this book! Meanwhile, I am grateful for my library carrying it and other Alison Bechdel works. Talk about a lesson in feminism and history! No details were spared in the telling of the different stories or in the drawings.
Not long ago I read Ms. Bechdel’s autobiography, Fun Home, and was blown away by the comic style to tell a serious story. The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For seems to be the L Word from before it became a series. But not. The characters are all different. The only way it is the same is that it is similar to watching a soap opera of lives going through, well, life and all that it throws at them. Each frame holds a story of its own. That was why it took me so long to read a comic book. That and this is a large book. Each frame held clues top the news of the moment, or books or music of the time. With this backdrop, the cast of characters live out their lives with all the problems and decisions one needs to make. Love, romance, school, children, break-ups, death… everything is included.
Ms. Alison Bechdel is the essential feminist. If you want to know what that movement is all about look into her books. No one loves and cares for women like a lesbian. And that love and care is visible in these books. A sign of our times to see how repressed women really are? The Bechdel Test: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bechdel_test will get you thinking about this archaic patriarchal world we live in through movies.
I have been on a mission for a while to find books under a similar test. I want to read books by women authors with strong women main characters. Recently there are a lot of them but suddenly I got tired of Young Adult books. Now I am on a mission to have exciting books by women with older main characters (preferably baby boomers NOW). AND I would like the genre to be Sci-fi or fantasy. Hey, but if they aren’t in that genre, or that age group, how about someone that isn’t 17 or the pretty and skinny girls. How about letting the world know that anyone can have an adventure and it can be an interesting read to all kinds of people. Is that too much to ask?
Back to this review, sorry, stepping off my soap box. The women in TEDTWOF don’t always talk about their love interests. The talk about politics, the environment, education, the poor, the wars, and, yes, love. You don’t have to be a lesbian to read and appreciate Ms. Bechdel’s work. In fact, I think if men and other straight women read these books, they would come out of the experience with an appreciation for all people.
Now I am off to read another Bechdel book: Are You My Mother?
Thank you Washoe County Library System for having these books available to everyone!
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