On the one hand: Several Duke University students have publicly announced their unwillingness to do the suggested freshman summer reading. They refused to read Fun Home, Alison Bechdel’s graphic memoir about her experiences with her father and her relationship with her sexual identity, because it offends their Christian values. Freshman Brian Grasso took issue with the “graphic visual depictions of sexuality” and said that “[he] would have to compromise [his] personal Christian moral beliefs to read it.” Others said that while they might have been willing to read it in plain print, the graphic format was unacceptable, with one saying it would “violate [his] conscience due to its pornographic nature.” Some students found it offensive that the book was included on the reading list at all.
Although the book selection has prompted valuable discussions for some first years, others said it changed their perception of Duke.
“I thought to myself, ‘What kind of school am I going to?'” said freshman Elizabeth Snyder-Mounts.
Grasso noted that he felt the book choice was insensitive to people with more conservative beliefs.
“Duke did not seem to have people like me in mind,” he said. “It was like Duke didn’t know we existed, which surprises me.”
On the other hand: Other students, not locked into a fearful, fundamentalist view of the world around them, are excited to read Fun Home and gratified to see it on the reading list. For some, the book and subsequent discussions have been their first exposure to the lives, experiences, and identities of LGBT people. For others, just the fact that Duke included the book on the freshman reading list, and invited Bechdel to speak on campus, is a gratifying sign that they might feel accepted on a welcoming campus.
Zephyr Farah, a first year student who attended the Bechdel lunch on August 20, described to us the “surreal” feeling she experienced when finding out “a book that talked so frequently and so deeply about being a lesbian was assigned [as] summer reading for school.” Farah grew up in places as far apart as Qatar, Angola and Texas, and was shocked at the openness she found when she got to campus, based on discussions of Fun Home. Marveling over the moment when she had the chance to shake Bechdel’s hand, Farah remarks, “It wasn’t the basketball, the school spirit, or the enormous Brodie Gym that excited me about Duke; it was the acceptance, the advocacy and the willingness here to treat people as people. Fun Home is a symbol of that for me.”
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It is unfortunate that the Duke Chronicle did not reach out to some of these students, LGBTQ or not, who have engaged so thoughtfully with Bechdel’s work. For example, Duke student Jasmine Lu told us that she was glad that Fun Home was selected as recommended reading because she had “never familiarized [herself] with the very common identity crisis that lesbian women go through.” She points out that while she appreciates the book for how it opened her mind to thinking about the difficulties that face LGBTQ people in coming to terms with their identities, what she got most out of the book was a meditation on how Bechdel’s relationship with her father had shaped her life. Lu wrote to us, “It was [Bechdel’s] revelation to us on how much of a mystery her father was even after all the facts of his life came out that really resonated with me as I’m sure it could with almost anyone. [… S]o while I respect the others’ choices to not read the book, I’m also sad that it wasn’t able to touch them as it had touched me.”
tl:dr: Some Christian students at Duke believe that anything depicting sexuality in a visual format is by definition biblically condemned wank fodder and are offended that their summer reading list was not crafted around their delicate sensibilities; other students acknowledge that college will likely be full of challenging ideas and that sometimes the things that offend them are the ones they most need to understand, and embrace the opportunity to learn something.
Bonus Bechdel: Unrelated to Christian sensibilities or Duke’s reading list, Bechdel has said that while the test that bears her name did appear first in her comic strip, the actual standard was created by her friend Liz Wallace and should really be called the Bechdel-Wallace test. Adjust future movie analyses accordingly.