Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama

Are You My Mother? is composed of Bechdel’s artwork done in black watercolor ink with splashes of pinkish red. This contrasts with Fun Home’s blue tones. Red is the color of anger, and Alison questions her anger at her mother throughout the book. Red is also a common hue used in makeup, which is reflected by Helen spending long periods perfecting her makeup and Alison coloring her cheeks in photographs. Finally, red ink is commonly used for making edits or corrections, demonstrated by the editorial comments Helen leaves for Alison and also Alison’s journey through therapy as a way to fix her problems.

Bechdel introduces each chapter with a dream. Dreams often appear vivid and nonsensical, but interpretation is possible through techniques such as Freud’s free association. Bechdel first illustrates the dream without context before revealing the time of the dream and her interpretation process. Both the dreams and the chapter endings contain black borders, connecting the dreams with reality.

Rather than paraphrase information, Bechdel directly quotes the source material of writers like Donald Woods Winnicott and Virginia Woolf. This includes mimicking the fonts and highlighting marks, allowing the reader to see the material as she sees it.