Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama

Alison Bechdel (1960-Present) grew up in Pennsylvania as the oldest of three children. She moved to Manhattan after graduating from Oberlin College and syndicates the comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For, about a group of lesbian friends and couples, which appeared in feminist and underground newspapers from 1983 to 2008. A 1985 strip was the inspiration for the “Bechdel test,” a measure of a movie’s treatment of women based on two values: whether there is more than one woman, and whether they discuss topics other than men.

In 2006, Bechdel published the Eisner-winning Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic as a graphic memoir of her father and her sexual awakening. The work became a 2013 theatrical adaptation that won five Tony Awards, including Best Musical. She also won the 2014 MacArthur “Genius” Award. Bechdel’s introspective nature and raw art style allow her to write intricate graphic memoirs combining personal narrative with literary discourse (Ray, Michael. “Alison Bechdel.” Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alison-Bechdel. Accessed 7/11/2020).

Bechdel begins Are You My Mother? by calling herself “a smarmy, self-indulgent, solipsistic piece of shit” (5). Alison’s first recourse is to blame herself for her problems, and she sees the accidents that delay her work on Fun Home as subconscious punishments.