Are Your My Mother, by Alison Bechdel

Are You My Mother? A Comic Drama by Alison Bechdel

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This graphic memoir considers the author’s relationship with her mother through the lens of psychotherapy, humor, and self-doubt. I enjoyed that it sometimes reads like a primer on the therapeutic process, enlightened by Freud, Donald Winnicott, Lacan, Virginia Wolf, Sylvia Plath and others. Snippets from writings on the transitional object, undoing, mirror-role, compliant behavior, the false self, and detachment are explored through conversations with Bechdel’s therapists, her mother, relationships with girlfriends, dreams, and reflections on the writing process and how much is too much to share about her parents. Her mother, Helen, was a stay-at-home mom who made time for her love of acting – we see her applying makeup, dressed up and transformed into roles in The Miser and A Little Night Music; and alternately in the kitchen in a kerchief and apron washing dishes. She tells her daughter at age 7 that she is too old to kiss goodnight anymore; and confesses that her own mother taught her “That boys are more important than girls” (264). She comes across as a harried, hard-working mother who has a mind and self of her own. The incisively drawn images, speech bubbles, and captions weave together much like jottings in a journal; shunt back and forth through time; and spin out telephone conversations, memories, and anxieties. Bechdel, whether toddler, teen, or successful writer and artist, persistently reflects on herself and her mother through the mirror of her art.



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