New Releases by Alison Bechdel

"So che mia madre si augura che io non scriva questo libro su di lei. La nota ironica è che se lei non avesse costituito un efficacissimo modello di temerarietà, io probabilmente non sarei qui a scriverlo." Per Alison Bechdel l''arte dell''autofiction è un nido a cui tornare, ma anche un campo di battaglia. È un mezzo di espressione necessario, forse l''unico, insieme alla psicanalisi, per riordinare il caos e trasformare il dolore in comprensione del mondo. Dopo essere andata a caccia della verità sul padre nel suo capolavoro Fun Home, l''autrice si rivolge una seconda volta alla sua "tragicomica" storia familiare sulle tracce della madre Helen: fine lettrice, attrice frustrata, moglie segretamente e scandalosamente tradita, donna dalle grandi aspirazioni artistiche, ma consapevole di vivere sotto una "cupola di vetro", madre distante e poco affettuosa. In un viaggio avanti e indietro nel tempo, ricco di sogni interpretati, sedute di terapia, lettere ritrovate, brani di Virginia Woolf e citazioni di Donald Winnicott, figura di primo piano della psicanalisi infantile, Alison ricompone le molte anime di sua madre per potercisi specchiare, e riconoscere così anche la propria identità. Perché, come scrive Vera Gheno nella prefazione a questa edizione, le due donne ritratte in questo libro sono "rotte ma non certo vinte". Un''opera autobiografica densa e sofferta, sicuramente "temeraria", un graphic memoir sulla complessità del rapporto tra figlie e madri, sulle origini, e sui fili che ci legano, nel bene e nel male, alle famiglie in cui siamo stati bambini. *********************** Questo eBook è ottimizzato per la fruizione su tablet; se ne sconsiglia pertanto la lettura sui dispositivi eReader.

A special hardcover Deluxe Collector''s Edition of Alison Bechdel''s groundbreaking, bestselling graphic memoir and basis for the Tony Award-winning musical--featuring a cloth case with new art, a reversible jacket with new art on both sides enhanced with teal and silver foil, and sprayed edges. Distant and exacting, Bruce Bechdel was an English teacher and director of the town funeral home, which Alison and her family referred to as the "Fun Home." It was not until college that Alison, who had recently come out as a lesbian, discovered that her father was also gay. A few weeks after this revelation, he was dead, leaving a confused legacy for his daughter to resolve. In her hands, personal history becomes a work of subtlety and power, written with controlled force and enlivened with humor, rich literary allusion, and heartbreaking detail.

L’autrice du classique moderne Fun Home revient avec son roman graphique le plus déjanté à ce jour. Après trois mémoires graphiques sur son père, sa mère, et sur sa passion pour les sports casse-cou, Alison Bechdel change de braquet. Elle délaisse l’autobiographie pour plonger dans l’autofiction comique. Sa nouvelle héroïne s’appelle Alison Bechdel, vit dans le Vermont et gère avec sa partenaire Holly un refuge pour chèvres naines du Pérou. Elle est cartoonist et a connu la gloire avec son livre Mort et taxidermie, consacré à son père empailleur. Le best-seller est devenu une série TV. Désormais riche et célèbre, Alison fait face à l’admiration envieuse de son groupe d’ami.e.s, en qui l’on reconnaît les personnages des Gouines à suivre avec trente ans de plus, livrés aux affres de la parentalité et du démon de midi. Mais lorsque Holly triomphe sur les réseaux sociaux avec un tutoriel viral sur l’art de débiter du bois, c’est autour d’Alison de céder à la jalousie médiatique. En panne sur son nouveau projet d’inspiration marxiste, elle imagine de créer un show de téléréalité follement populaire qui apprendrait aux gens à se libérer du consumérisme frénétique et à mener une vie plus éthique. Pas forcément la meilleure idée quand on est soi-même en proie aux sirènes de la surconsommation et aux aléas de la célébrité au cœur d’une Amérique au bord de la crise de nerfs et de la guerre civile. Elle sortira de l’aventure proprement LESSIVÉE. Sur les genoux, mais lavée de toute tentation. Sous les dehors de la comédie déjantée, Bechdel, en pleine verve voltairienne, épingle les modes de vie étranges de ses contemporain.e.s et pose de son trait acéré et bienveillant les questions qui font réfléchir.

The celebrated and beloved New York Times bestselling author of the modern classic Fun Home presents a laugh-out-loud, brilliant, and passionately political work of autofiction. “Truthful, rueful and delightful.”—LA Times In Alison Bechdel’s hilariously skewering and gloriously cast new comic novel confection, a cartoonist named Alison Bechdel, running a pygmy goat sanctuary in Vermont, is existentially irked by a climate-challenged world and a citizenry on the brink of civil war. She wonders: Can she pull humanity out of its death spiral by writing a scathingly self-critical memoir about her own greed and privilege? Meanwhile, Alison’s first graphic memoir about growing up with her father, a taxidermist who specialized in replicas of Victorian animal displays, has been adapted into a highly successful TV series. It’s a phenomenon that makes Alison, formerly on the cultural margins, the envy of her friend group (recognizable as characters, now middle-aged and living communally in Vermont, from Bechdel’s beloved comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For). As the TV show Death and Taxidermy racks up Emmy after Emmy—and when Alison’s Pauline Bunyanesque partner Holly posts an instructional wood-chopping video that goes viral—Alison’s own envy spirals. Why couldn’t she be the writer for a critically lauded and wildly popular reality TV show…like Queer Eye...showing people how to free themselves from consumer capitalism and live a more ethical life?!! Spent’s rollicking and masterful denouement—making the case for seizing what’s true about life in the world at this moment, before it’s too late—once again proves that “nobody does it better” (New York Times Book Review) than the real Alison Bechdel.

Après avoir exploré dans Fun Home et C’est toi ma maman ? les figures complexes de son père et de sa mère, c''est à la recherche d''elle même qu’Alison part avec ce nouvel ouvrage. Et où mieux se trouver que dans cette passion pour les sports violents, ineptes ou dangereux qui la pousse depuis l''enfance vers les derniers modèles de sneakers, tatamis, skis de fond, moutain bikes et autres instruments de torture ? Mais plus Alison se cultive physiquement, plus sa psyché semble lui faire obstacle. C’est donc du côté des philosophies orientales et des poètes romantiques et transcendantalistes des siècles passés, de Coleridge à Jack Kerouac, que notre exploratrice traque l''illumination. En artiste virtuose et athlète qui-ne-rajeunit-pas, elle parvient à la conclusion que le secret de la force surhumaine ne réside pas dans la vie au grand air et les abdos en plaquette de chocolat, mais plutôt dans le fait d''accepter sa dépendance aux autres, cruciale à la survie mentale. Comme dans toute son œuvre, humour, culture, introspection et profondeur de vue entrent en fusion pour faire de ce Secret de la force surhumaine une pierre de plus dans le jardin zen d''Alison Bechdel et une nouvelle pépite du roman graphique.

From the bestselling, award-winning author of Fun Home All her life, Alison Bechdel has searched for an elusive secret. The secret to superhuman strength. She has looked for it in her favourite books, the lives of her heroes, celibacy, polyamory, activism, therapy, and most obsessively, in her lifelong passion for exercise. Skiing, running, karate, cycling, yoga, weight lifting - you name it, she''s tried it. "Oh, to be self-sufficient! Hard as a rock! An island!" But as she gets older, her body isn''t getting any stronger. And in a changing, sometimes overwhelming world, are "cantaloupe-sized guns" all a person needs? Maybe the all-important secret is not where she expected to find it . . . In this, her third graphic memoir, Alison Bechdel has written a deeply layered, personal story about selfhood, self-sabotage, mortality, addiction, bliss, wonder, and the concerns of a generation.

L''auteure de Fun Home et de C''est toi, ma maman ? a réalisé entre 1983 et 2008 plus de 500 strips mettant en scène une pléiade de personnages (dont elle-même) et traitant, entre autres, du thème de l''homosexualité féminine. Alison Bechdel, plebiscitée dans le monde entier pour la qualité de son écriture et récompensée par de nombreux prix, y dépeint tout un pan de la contre-culture américaine de ces trente dernières années en mixant humour, révolte, réflexion et émotion. Réunies aux Etats-Unis sous le nom Dykes to Watch Out for, ces bandes dessinées devenues cultes (vous ne connaissez pas le "Test de Bechdel" ?) se voient enfin traduites en français dans leur intégralité.

The New York Times–bestselling graphic memoir about Alison Bechdel, author of Fun Home, becoming the artist her mother wanted to be. Alison Bechdel''s Fun Home was a pop culture and literary phenomenon. Now, a second thrilling tale of filial sleuthery, this time about her mother: voracious reader, music lover, passionate amateur actor. Also a woman, unhappily married to a closeted gay man, whose artistic aspirations simmered under the surface of Bechdel''s childhood...and who stopped touching or kissing her daughter good night, forever, when she was seven. Poignantly, hilariously, Bechdel embarks on a quest for answers concerning the mother-daughter gulf. It''s a richly layered search that leads readers from the fascinating life and work of the iconic twentieth-century psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott, to one explosively illuminating Dr. Seuss illustration, to Bechdel''s own (serially monogamous) adult love life. And, finally, back to Mother—to a truce, fragile and real-time, that will move and astonish all adult children of gifted mothers. A New York Times, USA Today, Time, Slate, and Barnes & Noble Best Book of the Year "As complicated, brainy, inventive and satisfying as the finest prose memoirs."— New York Times Book Review "A work of the most humane kind of genius, bravely going right to the heart of things: why we are who we are. It''s also incredibly funny. And visually stunning. And page-turningly addictive. And heartbreaking ."—Jonathan Safran Foer "Many of us are living out the unlived lives of our mothers. Alison Bechdel has written a graphic novel about this; sort of like a comic book by Virginia Woolf. You won''t believe it until you read it—and you must!"—Gloria Steinem

For 25 years Bechdel''s path-breaking "Dykes to Watch Out For" strip has been collected in award-winning volumes, syndicated in alternative newspapers, and translated into many languages. This collection gathers 60 of the newest strips.

This book takes its place alongside the unnerving, memorable, darkly funny family memoirs of Augusten Burroughs and Mary Karr. It''s a father-daughter tale perfectly suited to the graphic memoir form. Meet Alison''s father, a historic preservation expert and obsessive restorer of the family''s Victorian house, a third-generation funeral home director, a high school English teacher, an icily distant parent, and a closeted homosexual who, as it turns out, is involved with male students and a family babysitter. Through narrative that is alternately heartbreaking and fiercely funny, we are drawn into a daughter''s complex yearning for her father. And yet, apart from assigned stints dusting caskets at the family-owned ''fun home, '' as Alison and her brothers call it, the relationship achieves its most intimate expression through the shared code of books. When Alison comes out as homosexual herself in late adolescence, the denouement is swift, graphic, and redemptive.--From publisher description.

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In the tenth book in the best-selling lesbian comic series that has become an international treasure, Mo, Clarice, Lois, Sparrow and Toni square off on questions of idealism, violence, compassion, patriotism and dissent. As they hash out their ideological differences, a black-and-white world takes on surprisingly variegated shades of grey. Syndicated worldwide and in Diva magazine, this newest addition to the series is guaranteed to take the UK lesbian community by storm.

Go behind the pen and into the psyche of "dyke to watch out for" Alison Bechdel, cartoon chronicler extraordinaire, as the inner workings of lesbiana''s most quick-witted, longest-running social commentator are revealed. Illustrations throughout.

Big changes are set in motion when many of Alison Bechdel''s best-loved lesbian gals find themselves on the move in this eighth cartoon collection. Illustrations.

Alison''s Bechdel''s cartoons are a libidinous commentary on the tsunami of lesbian erotica surging through the culture. The familiar cast of characters will keep readers laughing as their carnal mores are revealed.

The sixth collection of Bechdel''s comic lampoons of lesbian life revisits Ginger, Mo, Lois, and Toni''s early lives.

This is the fifth collection of work from Bechdel''s signature comic strip, Dykes to Watch Out For. In this volume, Toni and Clarice are having a baby and of particular note is the long sequence created just for readers of Spawn--the birth itself. Where babies come from may never look the same again.

Grin, giggle, and guffaw your way through this celebrated cartoonist''s graphic commentary of contemporary lesbian life.

Irksomely earnest Mo makes her debut in this, the second collection of work from Bechdel''s signature comic strip. Mo''s at loose ends--unemployed, unintentionally celibate and unable to come to grips with a regrettable haircut. What could the unflappable Harriet possibly see in her? Perhaps the answer lies in the "mildly erotic" account of their first night together ...