Let’s Chat: A book review of a tragicomic

By Linda Tooth on July 2, 2025.

The UCP government in Alberta seems content on controlling what the young people in this province can and cannot read at their school libraries. Minister of Education and Childcare Demetrios Nicolaides has been in the news a lot lately telling us that parents are outraged to discover certain books are accessible to their children in school libraries.

His government put out a survey earlier this year with the subject heading. “How supportive are you of the Government of Alberta setting consistent requirements for school boards in how they select and manage school library materials?”

They were quite proud that nearly 80,000 people completed the survey. Now, to put that into context, in 2021 Statistics Canada states that the population of Alberta was 4,262,635 divided evenly between men and women. Of that number, 2,823,770 are between the ages of 15-64 years. I have read the survey’s questions, and I am not surprised they only received what I would call exceptionally small numbers.

I did state in my article last week I would read and report back on the books that are causing chaos in this conservative province. Book 1, Fun Home by Alison Bechdel.

Are you familiar with the term tragicomic? I had never heard of it before. The definition of tragicomic, according to the Cambridge Dictionary. is “a type of play or story that is both sad and funny.”

We are all familiar with the concept of comics as they appear in newspapers around the world daily. They take readers, like me, on a truly short-story journey using pictures and words in as little as two to four frames.

Tragicomic takes it a bit further by telling a longer story, which combines tragic events and humour using pictures and words. Bechdel’s novel is a 232-page autobiographical account of her earlier years growing up in Pennsylvania.

The story focuses on her relationship with her father as a young girl going through her college years. It was during that time he died by suicide. Throughout those years Bechdel gets her period for the first time (she does not tell her mother right away), starts to question her sexuality, has sex and finds out her parents’ marriage was not what it seems. Does this sound familiar to any of you?

Let me ask the question, “Are you comfortable discussing gender identity and sexuality with your children?”

We all want to think we are great communicators when it comes to our children, but sadly reality tells us that is not the case. Young people in communities like Medicine Hat are struggling to figure out where they belong in society, and because of this youth shelters are busy when family relationships are broken, and young people do not feel safe living there.

Why would the UCP government try to take away reading material that shows them it is OK to love someone who is of the same gender as themselves and that families are not perfect?

Time Magazine calls Fun Home “A masterpiece about two people who live in the same house but different worlds, and their mysterious debts to each other.”

This book is a great reading resource for young adults and should be available for them to read. Next up is Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe.

Have a Meowtastic day and keep reading!

Linda Tooth is a part-time communications instructor at Medicine Hat College

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