The Essential Dykes To Watch Out For

Product Information

Mo (Monica) TestaMain Character. Eventual partner to Sydney. Former employee at Madwimmin books, current aspiring librarian. She and Clarice were each others first lovers in college. Lois Mac GiverRomantic foil to Mo, Lois is the strip's resident Lothario (Lotharia?). Housemates with Ginger and Sparrow (and later Stuart & Jiao Raizel). Body to Ginger's Mind and Sparrow's Spirit. Formerly of Madwimmin, currently at Bounders Books’n’Muzak.

Starred review: “This ongoing comic strip chronicles the lives of a tight-knit group of lesbian friends over an astounding 21 years of life, work, love, boredom, political activism and countless reversals of fortune. At its heart are six women: the promiscuous Lois, a feminist bookstore clerk with a penchant for gender-bending; her two roommates, the overworked academic Ginger and self-identified ‘bisexual lesbian’ Sparrow; their domestically partnered friends Clarice and Toni; and Mo, who despite (or perhaps because of) her frequent politically charged outbursts of neurosis is the hub of her circle. These characters, flawed but endearing, are brought to life by Bechdel’s quirky artistic sensibility. Facial expressions are carefully nuanced, and she seems to take great joy in using small details to differentiate emotions. Late in the collection, when a character receives treatment for cancer, a tiny caret in her cheek is enough to transform her from a fresh-faced mischief-maker into a sallow and frightened chemo patient. What cannot be overemphasized is the sheer scope of the collection, which follows these women from idealistic young adulthood to contentedly disillusioned middle age and, for some, parenthood. All eventually end up a little more haggard than they began, but there isn’t one whose Bechdel-illustrated bags under her eyes were not hard fought for and hard won.” (Source: Publishers Weekly)

Awards

The audiobook stars actor Jane Lynch ( Glee) as the narrator; musician, writer, and actor Carrie Brownstein ( Portlandia) as Mo; actor Roberta Colindrez ( A League of Their Own) as Lois; author Roxane Gay ( Bad Feminist) as Jezanna; Broadway performer Jenn Colella ( Come From Away) as Harriet; and actor Melanie Nicholls-King ( The Wire) as Ginger. It also includes award-winning audiobook narrators Bahni Turpin as Clarice, Marisa Blake as Toni, and Emily Woo Zeller as Sparrow. Tags

Reddit sets this cookie to save the information about a log-on Reddit user, for the purpose of advertisement recommendations and updating the content. Cooper, Alex. "Alison Bechdel's Legendary Comic Dykes to Watch Out For Comes to Audible With All-Star Cast". The Advocate . Retrieved May 15, 2023. AR: It really is. I'm so excited about this. Thank you so much for the time, and congratulations. I think it's perfect that you're gonna have a whole new wave of folks—you're gonna also get folks that probably loved it for 25 years and now they're going to get to listen to it. What an opportunity. Dr. Sydney Krukowski, an academically involved, materialistic, yuppie Women's Studies professor with a compulsive spending habit, Mo's lover and a breast cancer survivor. And what about Lois, Mo’s best buddy and Casanova about town? She’s broken a thousand hearts in her day, but can she protect her own from the powers of Emma, the sultry divorcee?

Mo (Monica) Testa

The Bechdel test, a well-known measure of women's presence in movies and other forms of media, originally came from a 1985 strip of Dykes to Watch Out For. To pass the Bechdel test, a story must include two named women characters who have a conversation with each other about something other than a man. Most of the characters are well into what much of the heterosexual mainstream would consider this side of the spectrum, but it is played straight (for want of a better word). Ironically, in the last couple of years, straight male Stuart is the most Granola Girl character in the cast! I have good editing skills from my two years on the staff of the Lesbian Rag and I got counselling skills when I volunteered at the battered women’s shelter… DTWOF chronicled the lives, loves, and politics of a fairly diverse group of characters (most of them lesbians) living in a medium-sized city in the United States, featuring both humorous soap opera storylines and biting topical commentary. The strip was carried in Funny Times and syndicated to a number of gay and lesbian newspapers, and also posted on the web. [2] The first illustrated book edition was published by Firebrand Books in 1986. [3] The first of these collections contained miscellaneous, individual strips; the serialized story centered around Mo began halfway through the second collection, More Dykes to Watch Out For.

I always was a little disturbed by that, like, wow, that's a lot of responsibility. So I just tried not to think about that but I would definitely hear from people who claimed that was true. And certainly, people in small towns. This was way before we had gay and lesbian characters on TV. So it was just helpful for us to see a reflection of the kind of lives we were all leading. I'm just curious, do you have any advice for people who are struggling to be out these days?

Sparrow Pigeon

Shaw, Adrienne (2009). "Women on Women: Lesbian Identity, Lesbian Community, and Lesbian Comics". Journal of Lesbian Studies. 13 (1): 88–97. doi: 10.1080/07380560802314227. ISSN 1089-4160. LCCN 97660031. PMID 19197667. S2CID 44618909. Beeswax sets this cookie for targeting and advertising. The cookie is used to serve the user with relevant advertisements based on real time bidding. Jerkass: Sydney, the "evil women's studies professor," is pompous and supercilious, has terrible spending habits, is incapable of fidelity, has no interest in politics, and screwed over Thea when they were dating years ago. Despite her irritating the hell out of Mo, they have been partners for most of a decade now. Bechdel introduced her because she was "tired of writing such paragons of virtue."

Sparrow PigeonThe original Granola Girl of the cast. (Title currently held by her partner, Stuart). Lois was her first lover. Mother to Jiao Raizel with Stuart. Housemates with Lois and Ginger. That very simple idea has since spawned The Bechdel Test, a way for critics and viewers alike to decide if a film is going to be women-friendly. And yet, there are still too many movies that can’t pass this basic outline, which largely has to do with the same gatekeeping that has kept women directors from being hired, or for stories focusing on a womanbut especially, more than one woman. Occupation: Pretentious academic engaged in epistemic and ontological interrogation of feminist positionalities. Author Avatar: Alison describes her as "[embodying] all the values [she] assumed were part of being a lesbian when [she] came out.AR: This was one of the earlier ongoing representations that we got to see of lesbians in media. What has it been like for you? I would love to hear a little bit about what some of your fans have said to you about what it has meant to see that. And now, they're going to have an opportunity to listen to it. Other Commitments: Freedom to Marry advocate, fast-walking with the beguiling Gloria and fending off skeptical heterosexual parents.