It's been a couple of years since I read Fun Home, so I was really looking forward to Bechdel's second book. And while I liked it, it took me a really long time to be invested in it because it felt much more like a study in psychoanalysis than a story. Where Fun Home followed the story of Bechdel's experience with her father, Are You My Mother is, in theory, about Bechdel's mother.

I think the best way to summarize the thrust of the story is through the line that stuck out to me the most: "I would argue that for both my mother and me, it's by writing, by stepping back a bit from the real thing to look at it, that we are most present" (242).

This isn't a book about Bechdel's mother. It's much more about Bechdel and her struggle to grow up, to understand her world, and to interact with it in a healthy and meaningful way. Her mother's kind of cold and distant, for a number of reasons that Bechdel tries to analyze (penis envy, Lacan/Winnicot's notion of the Mirror, the burdens of feminism, and other hugely complicated philosophical and psychological ideas) but it comes down to the fact that her mother was an artist, and part of being an artist is separating oneself from life in the moment in order to step back and examine it much more fully. By presenting her mother through these lenses, Bechdel offers up a fuller story of who and what SHE is. That no matter what theory you want to subscribe to, there's no hard and fast answer to understanding everything. You just accept things for what they are and give them meaning that means something to you.

I'm a huge fan of her graphic styling, but the story wore on me. It took a long time to get to the meat of it because it left me feeling like I wasn't smart enough to "get" it. It's obvious why that tactic is used, but it came close to turning me off completely more than once.

I think I'd recommend rereading Fun Home before diving into this one. There are so many references to the father that I'd sort of forgotten about and think would have given more depth.