Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama

Alison Bechdel

May 2012 · Sold by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

About this ebook

The New York Times–bestselling graphic memoir about Alison Bechdel, author of Fun Home, becoming the artist her mother wanted to be.

Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home was a pop culture and literary phenomenon. Now, a second thrilling tale of filial sleuthery, this time about her mother: voracious reader, music lover, passionate amateur actor. Also a woman, unhappily married to a closeted gay man, whose artistic aspirations simmered under the surface of Bechdel's childhood…and who stopped touching or kissing her daughter good night, forever, when she was seven.

Poignantly, hilariously, Bechdel embarks on a quest for answers concerning the mother-daughter gulf. It's a richly layered search that leads readers from the fascinating life and work of the iconic twentieth-century psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott, to one explosively illuminating Dr. Seuss illustration, to Bechdel’s own (serially monogamous) adult love life. And, finally, back to Mother—to a truce, fragile and real-time, that will move and astonish all adult children of gifted mothers.

A New York Times, USA Today, Time, Slate, and Barnes & Noble Best Book of the Year

 

“As complicated, brainy, inventive and satisfying as the finest prose memoirs.”—New York Times Book Review

 

“A work of the most humane kind of genius, bravely going right to the heart of things: why we are who we are. It's also incredibly funny. And visually stunning. And page-turningly addictive. And heartbreaking.”—Jonathan Safran Foer

 

“Many of us are living out the unlived lives of our mothers. Alison Bechdel has written a graphic novel about this; sort of like a comic book by Virginia Woolf. You won't believe it until you read it—and you must!”—Gloria Steinem

Ratings and reviews

After reading and thoroughly enjoying Fun Home, I was weary of how this would match up. I thought I might be let down by it, but I was very pleasantly surprised to learn that this graphic novel was just as beautiful and engaging (if not more so) as Fun Home. A wonderful story and, of course, fantastic artwork. A very enjoyable read.

Excellent read

About the author

ALISON BECHDEL’s cult following for her early comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For expanded wildly for her family memoirs, the New York Times bestselling and Time magazine #1 Book of the Year graphic memoir Fun Home, adapted into a Tony Award-winning musical, and Are You My Mother? Bechdel has been named a MacArthur Fellow and Cartoonist Laureate of Vermont, among many other honors. The Secret to Superman Strength is her third graphic memoir.