“unmetabolized emotions we absorb from our parents”

“Are You my Mother?”

This memoir is extremely intimate. As intimate as Fun Home was, Alison Bechdel takes it a step further in Are you My Mother?. She gives the reader a glimpse of her most intimate conversation with lovers, her therapists and even with books. The number of panels dedicated to external conversations in Alison’s life seem few more than the number of panels dedicated to text (whether from books or letters between family members). 

With 7 chapters, Bechdel artfully opens each with a dream and closes each chapter with a single image for the reader to focus on. Sometimes the ending images are transitional (Transitional Objects), other times they close the main idea of the chapter (mirror).

I never got bored with the images in this graphic memoir. Bechdel did a great job of using her images to help the reader explore the environment (whether physical environment or the environment of the rooms she held conversation in – bland room with her therapist, in bed with her lover etc.) and help us peak into texts that were monumental of her own self-awareness at the time. The way she introduced us to these texts help me feel like I was on that journey of her self-discovery with her. I knew no more and no less than her about her journey at any given moment. Bechdel’s story telling in this memoir is still circular, though not as much as Fun Home. There are a few moments along her journey that she does talk to us from the present-day self – ex: “The irony of the fact that I’m writing a book about all this is not lost on me” (p152). This creates a strong connection between author and reader as it feels like the author is actually talking to us directly.

Flipping through the book again, I thought Bechdel’s use of color was interesting. She uses black/white/red throughout the book, but I noticed that she uses more red in scenes with her mother. Whether intentional or not, she decorates herself in red and her mother, but rarely any of the other characters. I was also never bored with the graphics because she does a great job with varying the panel size often enough to keep our attention.

 I found some of the ideas around narcisstic cathexis, the cripple game, reaction formation, and the transitional object particularly interesting. I noticed when I was reading that Bechdel spends much more time analyzing her interactions with her mother than actually “in the moment” putting energy into interacting with her. And then when she reads about “narcisstic cathexis” – where “you invest more energy into your ideas about another persona than in the actual, objective, external person” (217). This was so crazy. I felt like my own analysis of her relationship with her mom was being affirmed by what she was learning in therapy. This effect made me really feel like I was in her journey of self discovery with her.

I love the ending of Are You My Mother? With the cripple game that she played as a child. It seems to tie into all the findings about her relationship. One of my favorite quotes from the memoir is about the “unmetabolized emotions we absorb from our parents” (p72-73). I think this last scene really shows how crippled Alisson was because of that lack of intimacy with her mom, and also the special place that a mother has in helping her child. A mother is the only one who can help her daughter heal in certain ways, and as much as Bechdel doubts her mother will ever really come around, in the end her mother finally does (and all the work pays off).