Are You My Mother?

Hi All,

I apologize for my late blog but yesterday I was suffering from a terrible, debilitating migraine. I don’t know if any of you have ever had one of these but basically they suck and for me at least, it’s rare that any amount of medicine helps. All I can do it try and sleep with the lights out and in total silence (which is near to impossible with two kids lol). Well, anyway, here is my blog for this week. Thank you for your understanding.

I don’t expect that many of you know this but I am a librarian at my daughter’s school and Are You My Mother? happened to land on the week that we celebrate Dr. Seuss’ birthday (it’s March 2^nd). After reading to 14 classes things like The Sneetches, The Lorax and Horton Hears a Who it was incredibly difficult to not make the comparison, constantly. I started this book wondering if she was ever going to make a connection to the title with the Dr. Seuss book, Are you my Mother? Although she never explicitly makes this connection, she does however provide the reader with insight into perhaps the thinking of how this title came about. On pages 132-133 Bechdel provides the reader with a double page, full spread display of the analysis of how her memories of reading Dr. Seuss’ Sleep Book has crept back into her daily life. She provides example of  “plexiglass dome” term to explain her mother and the incessant daily recording to show how it not only influenced her as a child, but now also as an adult. In many ways, Bechdel has now provided us with a bridge to understanding why she titled the book as she did. Perhaps it is simply a childhood memory of a book that she either so closely identified with or is now simply influencing her in her adult years.

In addition to the title, I found it incredibly difficult not to connect some of Bechdel’s illustrations throughout Are You My Mother? to some of Dr. Seuss’ own illustrations. For example, the color usage within the illustration is very similar to that found in Horton Hears a Who (and many others). In both of these books, tones of just black and white are used along with a singular “other color”. In Are You My Mother? this color is red. Within Horton Hears a Who this color is blue. So, as you can tell it was very difficult for me not to make these sorts of connections. I think she did this for two possible reasons. First, if she did this in a sort of unconscious way, it would further support her given argument throughout the book surrounding the influences of childhood, repression and such. It displays how her childhood experiences influence her still as a middle-aged adult. Second, if she did this as a conscious choice, it would simply allow for her to display, with one title, how a childhood book influenced her and spoke to her both as a child and as an adult. For anyone who has read the Dr. Seuss version of Are you my Mother? they would be able to immediately understand perhaps the emptiness or feelings of constantly searching that Bechdel had towards her mother.

Things that I had difficulty with or questions about include the following: First, why the decision to start every chapter with a dream? Not only just a dream, but also with the blackout pages. Why? At first I thought simply that the blacked out pages were a way for her to indicate, as she does with the use of squiggly dialogue bubbles, a difference in the text or the source of information. In this case, it would be simply to indicate that she is dreaming. But as I read on, I realized that to some extent this was not the case because she also ends every chapter with the black pages. When she ends the chapter with the black pages it does not appear that she is dreaming. There are also times when she is dreaming throughout a chapter and she again utilizes the black pages. It made me think and perhaps I can get some fresh perspective on it in class. Second, I had such a hard time following all the juxtaposition of the psychology and psychoanalytical jargon, references, etc. I felt almost put off by it, as if I oddly felt that this sort of thing had no space in a narrative. It was something that I had rarely felt, though I have rarely encountered this “type” of narrative or novel. I understand that it has a place in Bechdel’s life but why so much? It almost reminded me of a sort of stream of consciousness thing where while she wrote this memoir and staying true to her train of thought she makes constant connections to Woolf, Freud, etc. It was somewhat hard to follow and really make those connections, at least for me. In addition to this, I had difficultly following her non-linear sections of the book. Overall, the memoir seemed somewhat linear but she went back and forth, in dreams, to her childhood, recalling memories in therapy, etc. I found this a bit confusing and wondering why she chose to make these sorts of decisions. Perhaps, as I said before she wanted to stick to a sort of stream of consciousness type of feel throughout the book and felt it stayed true to her memory and train of thought. I can appreciate that, though as I said, I found myself backtracking a few times just to understand where I was at “in the story”.