Are You My Mother? by Alison Bechdel

     What first caught my attention is that the entire book is illustrated using only black, white, grey and red. The red is not used to drawn people's attention, instead of a bright or dark red, the red is always a little bit grey. Due to the fact the grey takes up most of the book. The selected colors created a distressed mood from beginning to end. It's indeed a very intense story with a lot of weight in its content.

      It's rather rare these days to find a piece of work that focused on the relationship between mother and children, and I believe "Are You My Mother?" is probably going to be the best example of its kind.   As humans we all run into problems with our parents. It usually resolve with time, or stayed there but fainted away, because we have lived together for a long time. However this book really brought me into re-thinking about my relationship with my mother, and most importantly, how she had impact on my life.

      I looked at the book as an illustrated autobiography, the book can be complete by itself from just the words. The characters are not acting out as much, most of the emotions and information we get is from the text. Yet what's special about this book is that it's jumping around. It's almost like the author wrote this book following her stream of consciousness. She just brought up whatever comes up in her mind, flipping through the book of memories. It's much more interesting this way than following a chronological order. In this case if the author were to write a book based on a time line it wouldn't seem as effective as the way it is. Just like she narrated in the book, “I don’t have the negatives, so there’s no way to know their chronological order but I’ve arranged them according to my own narrative.”

     It reminds me of the "Maus" a big time when I was reading through the book. Although it's more of a personal story and may not be as in depth story-wise, but the fact that the book is illustrated in a memoir form and it's a conversation between parent and child make the two very similar. What's different is the author portrayed herself exactly the way she looks in the reality in the comic. She is coming from her own point of view when telling the story. However in comparison with Maus, it is a lot more emotional story.