The following podcast contains explicit language.

Welcome, one and all, to the Slate Audio Book Club's discussion of Alison Bechdel's comics memoir, Are You My Mother?

I'm Dan Coise, editor of the Slate Book Review, and I'm joined here in Slate's New York recording studio by Megan O'Rourke, who's a culture critic for Slate.

Hi, Megan.

Hi, Dan.

And Emily Bazelon, who's a Slate senior editor.

Hi, Emily.

Hello.

We are here today to discuss Alison Beckdell's follow-up to her best-selling breakout book, Fun Home.

Fun Home was about Allison's relationship to her father, a closeted gay funeral home director who committed suicide by jumping in front of a truck while Allison was in her 20s.

And now, Ar You My Mother is about Allison's relationship to her mother, Helen, an English teacher and an amateur actress who is very much alive and very, very much a presence in Allison's life day to day.

And, in fact, during the crafting of this book.

In fact, a great deal of this book consists of Allison talking to her mother about the book.

And the memoir's climax revolves around basically her mother's response to this exact memoir.

Megan, you reviewed Are You My Mother for the Slate Book Review last month, and so I'd love to start with you, if I can.

Early in the book, Allison takes pride in inheriting from her mother a desire to tease out patterns in the fabric of everyday life. The line is on page 31,

the search for meaningful patterns may very well be crazy, but to be enlisted with her in it,

with her mother in it, thrills me. And by that, I think she's referring really not just to what

she loves to do on the day to day, but to the structure of this book, to the structure of Are You My Mother, which is even more intricate and recursive than the structure of Fun Home was.

It bounces around in time. It tells stories within stories. You refer to it in your review as a Mubius strip. Is that how you pronounce it?

Mubius strip.

Yeah. Probably. I only ever read it.

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