Suicide is an unfortunate pillar of queer history and mythos. This tragic portrayal of queerness will stay a facet of queer literature until we find ourselves in a world where queer people don’t kill themselves. On queer suicide, scholar Heike Bauer said these deaths are “markers of the potentially lethal force of heteronormative ideals and expectations,” and become part of “a traumatic collective experience” (Bauer 38). Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic and Zami: a New Spelling of My Name both include suicides that have a lasting effect on the narrators’ lives and future relationships. Though Alice and Audre live starkly different lives, and are involved with different aspects of the queer community, their grief connects them and shows how tragedy is a through line in queer communities. In Fun Home, Alison is attached to the idea that her father’s death is a suicide, and explores both how society failed him and how her father failed her. In spite of, or possibly because of Alison’s father’s inability to live a fulfilling life as a queer person, Alison is able to find herself and move past this tragedy, settling into her own queer joy. In Zami, Audre struggles to accept her best friend’s death, and is haunted by the possibility of the life they could have lived together, following her as she projects Gennie into the life she builds. In texts that blur the biographical and fictional, the choice to depict these deaths comes from a real place of queer grief and a desire to understand why their loved ones killed themselves. These texts serve as both an obituary and a suicide note.
In order to understand how the suicides in these texts affect the narrators and relate to the greater queer community, we must start with the suicides themselves. Alison consistently speaks bluntly of her father’s suicide, starting at its first mention, when she shares that she wishes she could at least say her father stuck around, “but of course he didn’t” (Bechdel 22). She soon after elaborates that “There’s no proof, actually, that [her] father killed himself. […] but there are some suggestive circumstances.” She then cites her mother requesting a divorce, among other things (Bechdel 27). Despite discussing the lack of evidence and the possible other causes, Alison makes it clear she does not believe it was an accident. In contrast Alison’s blunt tone, Audre speaks of Gennie with a sense of reverence. When introducing Gennie, Audre shares that “she was [her] first true friend” (87). Before Gennie’s death, Audre dealt with a suicide attempt she was given warning for. Gennie wanted to move in with her father, who had shown up in her life for the first time since her conception, and aimed to take her life after her mother’s refusal. “All summer long, Gennie had said she was going to cut her wrists when the summer was over. / And, that is exactly what she did” (Lorde 92). Audre was immensely relieved that her friend survived, but less than a year later, Gennie committed suicide. “They found Gennie on the steps of the 110th Street Community Center this morning,” Gennie’s mom reported to Audre, “She's taken rat poison. Arsenic” (Lorde 97). Though they varied in closeness, Alison and Audre both lost someone they considered family to suicide.
In Fun Home Alison clings to the idea that her father’s death was a suicide. At his funeral in response to condolences and references to the mysterious way the lord works she wishes to scream, “There’s no mystery! He killed himself because he was a manic-depressive, closeted fag and he couldn’t face living in this small minded town for one more second” (Bechdel 125). She is enraged by others dancing around the topic when she sees it so clearly. She believes her father had ample reason to kill himself and must have done so. Much of her explanation of her father’s suicide is also an argument that it is a suicide. His repressed homosexuality in a small town, mental health issues, and crumbling marriage all lead Alison to believe when the truck hit him, he intentionally jumped in front of it. In one panel Alison is shown in conversation with her mother and a text box inside the panel reads, “It’s possible that we choose to believe this because it was less painful.” In this moment she admits that it is a choice she makes to believe it was a suicide and that it may come from a place of desire. She believes that if her father killed himself intentionally it would hurt less, because it means it was something he meant to do, which makes it easier to blame him. Within the panel a speech bubble comes from her mom saying, “I think it was something he always meant to do” (29), framing his death as an inevitability rather than a tragedy. All this is done in an attempt to alleviate grief and make sense of his life.
Audre, in contrast, tries to deny Gennie’s suicide even as the doctors tell her she is dying “Gennie was going to live. She'd fool all of us again,” Audre pleas, “Gennie'll think of someplace nobody'll think of looking, and then eventually she'll come sauntering in […] saying, "I was fine all the time."” (Lorde 98). She fantasizes that Gennie will pull through, like she did after her first attempt, this time even more extravagantly faking her death and coming back in a dramatic reveal. She cannot cope with her friend dying, or understand that she wants to die. As she sits at her bedside, she asks her “Don't die, Gennie. Do you still want to?” Hoping she will admit she made a mistake, and that somehow that will save her. Gennie responds simply, "Of course, I do. Didn't I tell you I was going to?" (Lorde 100). She draws back to the declarations made before her attempt, acting like this is what she planned all along. Gennie attempts to approach everything with a certain suaveness, even her own death. Audre still cannot accept her closest friend’s death or understand her reasoning. She asks Gennie why she did it and is met with the inconclusive response: “Now don't be silly. You know why" (100). When Gennie’s mother later asks her if she knows why she did it, Audre still cannot find a reason. She is never able to reach a concrete conclusion for Gennie’s suicide, but at her mother’s suggestion blames Gennie’s father. This struggle to process the death and the events surrounding it follows Audre even once Gennie is dead and buried.
Both Alison and Audre display guilt and feel a sense of blame for the suicides of their father and best friend. Early in the text Alison cites the divorce papers as one of the stresses that factored into her father’s suicide. Later she shows that she encouraged her mother to divorce her father saying “You’ve done enough. You should go” (217). This leads her to feel some responsibility for his death. More directly, she contemplates, “If I had not felt compelled to share my little sexual discovery, perhaps the semi would have passed without incident four months later” (59). Wondering the burden her sexuality had on her father’s emotional state, and if it was a factor in his choice to step in front of the truck. She plays with the problem one runs into when blaming themself, stating that “[t]he idea that I caused his death by telling my parents I was a lesbian is perhaps illogical.” She seems like she is going to lead into how it is not her fault, or how the two things could not possibly be connected, but pivots, instead stating that her and her father could never be that connected. “Causality implies connection, contact of some kind” (84), a contact Alison was desperate for, but never had with her father. Audre’s connection with Gennie is much more intimate, both serving as each other’s closest person. Audre repeatedly told Gennie how she didn’t want her to die and didn’t know what to do without her, but was met with snide remarks. Her efforts were not enough despite their closeness. After her death, she remarks “None of us had given her a good enough reason to stay here,” and puts specific focus on how she could not save her stating “not even me. I could not escape that” (100). In attempting to understand what lead to their suicides, in lieu of no explanations provided by the people themselves, both narrators blame themselves, a phenomenon all too common in these tragedies. In a discussion of suicide in the queer community, Sara Schulman, an American AIDS activist, commented on how too often “we’re locked in blame,” when it comes to these tragedies. People are too quick to blame themselves in search of an answer. “I wish we could change that to trying to understand what’s happening” (Schulman 84). Hoping for a broader understanding of the epidemic in the queer community rather than finger pointing and guilt. This view draws attention to the culture of blame displayed in both texts and the harm it causes. In search of answers, Alison and Audre turn on themselves, seeking any understanding of the situation even if the conclusion is that they failed or did wrong in some way.
The choice to focus on these people and their deaths so heavily in their autobiographical stories shows the effect their suicides had on Alison and Audre, and how they relate to the queer community as a collective. As stated by Virginia Woolf, “the art of biography is the most restricted of all the arts” (Woolf), in writing an autobiography they are restricted to the events and facts of their life and must construct a story out of that life. The way in which they depict people holds extra weight as it shows their relevance in the author’s life to be worthy of so much space on the page. In his essay on death, suicide, and modern queer culture, Bauer puts specific emphasis on how clichés and expectations shape how traumatic stories are shared, stating how, “(re)telling of [a story of suicide] indicates how cultural conventions work themselves into the representation of traumatic memory” (Bauer 43). He explores how in retelling these stories, people will fill the gaps in their memory with the beats they come to expect in these stories. The autobiographic nature of these texts further highlights the effect their deaths had on the authors’ lives, and slots their tragedies into the greater cultural consciousness of queer suicide, turning these people in part into characters that represent a greater epidemic of suicide. When Alison discusses that perhaps it is illogical to say her coming out lead to her father’s death because she never had that great of an effect on her life, she solidifies her father as a character in a story, staying “however convincing they might be, you can’t lay hands on a fictional character” (84). She explains the distance between her and her father with the metaphor that he is not real. In placing him in a graphic novel this is further emphasized, making it seem like where he most belongs. The book is a tomb for the tortured artist. Alison shares that although her father did not kill himself until she was “nearly twenty, […] his absence resonated retroactively, echoing back through all the time [she] knew him” (23). His absence from her life creates a void that draws Alison’s attention, a gap where her father should be, where he always should be, but where a drawing in a book resides instead. Gennie’s absence is not felt applied to Audre’s past, instead her shadow follows Audre wherever she goes. Audre is motivated to leave her childhood home after “disparaging remarks [her] father made about Gennie” (104). She carries Gennie’s guitar with her to every new home (104, 117) and sees her in new lovers. The memory of Gennie motivates choices she makes, and she takes every opportunity to see Gennie in the world around her. She even describes in some situations when she’s in a place Gennie would have loved to share with her, “it was as if Gennie had come alive again.” She speaks to Gennie explaining where she’s found herself and how the world has changed (124). The deaths echo over the narrators’ lives, existing as a framework for what comes next and casting a shadow over the past.
Fun Home and Zami both include contemplations of what could have been if those they lost lived under different circumstances. Alison considers if her father had survived whether he would have died soon anyway due to the AIDS epidemic. In a panel depicting her father sitting on a pier she follows this contemplation with the realization, “[t]here’s a certain emotional expedience to claiming him as a tragic victim of homophobia. But that is a problematic line of thought.” She elaborates that the line of thought makes it more difficult to blame her father for what happened and that it leads her to look even further into what her father’s life could be. In a new panel Alice stands in the middle of a pride parade her father marches in, looking around in confusion. “If my father had “come out” in his youth, if he had not meet and married my mother…” Alison questions, “…where would that leave me” (196-197). She contemplates a better life for her father, one where he doesn’t kill himself, one where he is loud and proud. She imagines how much better his life could be without the burdens of society’s homophobia. Though a part of her fears this possibility, because it is one she has no place in, one where she does not exist. Her life and her joy are not possible without his suffering. “In a way, you could say my father’s end was my beginning. / or more precisely that the end of his lie conceded with the beginning of my truth” (117). Her father’s tragic death and repression motivate Alison’s life being out and proud and fulfilled. In a world where he is better supported, she is not, or she does not exist at all. Alison cannot picture a life where they are both happy and alive. Audre mourns the life she could have shared with Gennie, listing: “Things I never did with Genevieve: Let our bodies touch and tell the passions that we felt. Go to a Village gay bar, or any bar anywhere. Smoke reefer. Derail the freight that took circus animals to Florida. Take a course in international obscenities. Learn Swahili. See Martha Graham's dance troupe. Visit Pearl Primus. Ask her to take us away with her to Africa next time. Write THE BOOK. Make love” (97). She knows the future she could have had with Gennie, one they often discussed, and one she won’t have after Gennie’s death. Gennie and Audre shared love for each other and could have come into their queerness together, but Gennie never got to explore her sexuality due to her young death. At the end of the book, she returns one last time to Gennie’s death, stating “I lost my sister, Gennie, to my silence and her pain and despair, to both our angers and to a world's cruelty that destroys its own young in passing” she shares that after all this time she “[has] never been able to blind [herself] to that cruelty” (251-252). The larger societal factors that lead to Gennie’s death still haunt her, and the mourning persists. She cannot let go of the potential that was lost in Gennie’s death. In both texts the authors find themselves imagining a better life for the dead, but only one of them could share that joy.
These individual deaths contribute to a greater collective trauma of the queer community. In Balaev’s writing on “Trends in Literary Trauma Theory” she shares how “the traumatic experience of the individual and group become one,” in the case of “others of the same ethnic, racial, or gender group who did not experience the actual event, […] because they share social or biologic similarities” (BALAEV 152). This theory explores how hearing of events that effect those in a shared community effect the group as the whole through the connection of the traits they share. Both Gennie and Alison’s father lacked adequate community and support to keep living, and became a part of the greater epidemic of queer suicide. Zami explores the importance of community to survival when Audre describes a lesbian friend group she found as an adult. One of the positives she cites the group having is there “[t]here was always somebody calling you on the telephone, to interrupt the fantasies of suicide” (Lorde 179). By having these other queer women to rely on, Audre had someone always there to talk her off the ledge or interrupt a spiral. Both Alison and Audre find supportive lesbian communities and are able to find their place in the queer community, where those they lost could not.
Works cited
BALAEV, MICHELLE. “Trends in Literary Trauma Theory.” Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal, vol. 41, no. 2, 2008, pp. 149–66. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44029500. Accessed 21 Apr. 2024.
Bauer, Heike. “Death, Suicide, and Modern Homosexual Culture.” The Hirschfeld Archives:Violence, Death, and Modern Queer Culture, Temple University Press, 2017, pp. 37–56. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1wf4dmd.6. Accessed 21 Apr. 2024.
Bechdel, Alison. Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2007.
Lorde, Audre. Zami, a New Spelling of My Name. 1st ed. Watertown, Mass: Persephone Press,
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Page, Morgan M., and Sarah Schulman. “Queer Suicidality, Conflict, and Repair.” QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, vol. 4, no. 1, 2017, pp. 68–99. JSTOR,
https://doi.org/10.14321/qed.4.1.0068. Accessed 21 Apr. 2024.
Woolf, Virginia. “The Art of Biography.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 28 May 2022, www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1939/04/the-art-of-biography/654067/.
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