Are You My Mother? by Alison Bechdel

Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama by Alison Bechdel

Many years ago, I read Bechdel's Fun Home, and now I've finally gotten around to picking up the follow-up, Are You My Mother? Fun Home was about Bechdel's father, a closeted gay man who committed suicide; this volume is (obviously) about her mother, a woman Bechdel has never quite figured out nor gotten beyond.

Published: 2012
Read: August 2021

Though I found this effectively composed, I also found it somewhat diffuse. It tries to weave together a number of different elements (Bechdel's childhood, Bechdel in therapy, discussions of the history of psychology, Bechdel writing the book itself), with the effect that I felt Bechdel's relationship with her mother got kind of lost, to the extent that it wasn't actually clear to me what Bechdel's beef with her mother was. What had she done that cast such a long shadow? The mother is an interesting character, but I also felt like she was not quite seen in this book. Which is appropriate, one supposes, as one of this book's points is that Bechdel doesn't really know her mother... but makes for frustrating reading. I guess I would say Bechdel is a skilled graphic memoirist, but I didn't really feel like this made the best use of those skills. Glad I read it, but nowhere near as strong as Fun Home, and it doesn't make me want to seek out her most recent effort, which is apparently about fitness fads?