Few secrets are left unexplored in Are You My Mother?, Alison Bechdel‘s new graphic memoir about her frayed relationship with her mother, Helen. Bechdel’s first memoir, Fun Home, focused on the suicide of her closeted father, Bruce; Helen was little more than a disengaged figure in that book, heavily burdened by her husband’s secret. Are You My Mother? puts her center stage—while at the same time giving us Bechdel herself stripped bare and truly fearless.
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Bechdel introduces her relationship with Helen in the first few pages, with a sequence that strikes a brilliant balance between illustration and text. The stilted dialogue certainly denotes a difficult relationship, but the drawings illuminate an even greater gulf between mother and daughter. Bechdel prepares to tell Helen about Fun Home and recites possible ways to break the news (“I have something to tell you. Mom, I want to tell you something” ). When Bechdel finally spits it out, Helen responds, “I can’t help you. You’re on your own.” Throughout the conversation, Bechdel illustrates herself staring nervously and longingly at Helen, who intentionally avoids her gaze.
Among Winnicott’s more renowned theories, for instance, is that of the “good-enough mother,” who initially adapts to her baby’s needs but gradually stops doing so as the baby matures. Before explaining the theory, Bechdel tells us that Helen stopped nursing her at a very young age; she suggests that the early weaning opened a lifelong fissure between her and her mother. “I don’t think it’s going too far to claim that our ‘failure’ must have been deeply frustrating for both of us,” she writes. “Or even that a pattern of mutual preemptive rejection could have been set in motion, each of us withholding in order to foreclose future rejection.” Then she pairs her actual discussion of the good-enough mother with a drawing of young Helen feeding her with a bottle. The juxtaposition of a theoretical insight with an accessible image makes both vivid.
