Are You My Mother? A Comic Drama
Boston / New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012. 3rd Printing. Hard Cover. Fine / Fine. Item #2353088
ISBN: 9780618982509
Inscribed and signed by author with doodle on title page ('for Rhoda! Alison Bechdel'), with a signed handwritten letter on Bechdel's own stationery laid in. Rhoda is Rhoda Levine, the opera director, choreographer, and faculty member at Juilliard, Yale School of Drama, etc. To her Bechdel writes: '7.5.12 / Rhoda, Thank you for coming to my talk at NYU Institute for the Humanities last winter, and for the copy of 'Three Ladies Beside the Sea,' which I LOVE. Here, as promised, is a copy of my new book. Apologies for sending it so belatedly. Sincerely, Alison').
286, [4] pp. A memoir in the form of a graphic novel, by the author of Fun Home. Bechdel is the namesake of The Bechdel Test, used to measure representation of women in film. 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.
Price: $175.00