Why Lie?

In Fun Home the first thing that struck me was the things she was saying about her father. I have always had a deeply ingrained sense of family loyalty so seeing her be so open about her fathers faults bothered me. She mentioned many things that I could not imagine telling other individuals, such as showing her father hitting them, working them so relentlessly as well as his sexual preferences and eventual downfall. I felt that no one would say such things unless they were true because who would benefit from her father being cast in that light? Certainly not her or her family. In class though many people brought up the idea that it might not all be factual; true everything is based on her interpretation of them, but there's not much wiggle room for the image of her father smacking one of her siblings in the face. Not much interpretation in her going to see a dead body with its genitalia exposed at a young age either. I believe that no one would say these things unless they were true when writing a memoir, granted that is based on my personal morals and ideas. If she were trying to paint her father as a villain then I would understand the idea of her fudging the truth a bit to get more support but she seems relatively close with him. If it were not true then I believe her mother and brothers would have objected quite vehemently against the narrative, and it seems that the opposite was true. On the last page of the book she thanks her family from not stopping her from writing this book. The entire situation seems surreal to me.