10 of the Best Memoirs About Mothers

This week saw the release of cult cartoonist Alison Bechdel’s second work of non-fiction, Are You My Mother: A Comic Drama, a graphic memoir that investigates her relationship with her mother in all its fraught, tender weirdness. We’ve loved Bechdel ever since we read her 2006 memoir Fun Home, about her father’s suicide, and her newest work doesn’t disappoint — it’s at once poignant and goofy, alarming and sweet, and filled with vignettes of mother-child relations that will have you squirming with recognition, no matter who you are. After we zipped through the book, we felt a hankering for more memoirs about mothers, so in case you feel the same way thanks to a certain holiday on the horizon, we’ve collected a few of the best examples in recent memory here. Click through to check out our list, and let us know if we missed your favorite mommy memoir in the comments.

Are You My Mother: A Comic Drama, Alison Bechdel

Bechdel’s second memoir shifts focus from her father to her mother — though of course, these things are all still entwined: in Are You My Mother memoir, she is writing Fun Home, and seeking her mother’s reluctant approval. She discusses her relationship with her mother in depth, as well as her mother’s relationship with her art, which she’d like if it wasn’t so lesbian-y. ”I would love to see your name on a book,” her mother says after Bechdel signs a book deal. “But not on a book of lesbian cartoons.” In our eyes, the frustration and universally recognizable sadness inherent in this interaction drives the book.

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I like "Songs of My Families". A great memoir about a very brave little girl (who grows up to be a very wonderful woman).

Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness by Alexandra Fuller

Memory Palace, by Mira Bartok

I think the book "No More Tears" by Reeve Lindbergh should also be on the list. It is not a story about a dysfunctional relationship but is a loving tribute to Anne Morrow Lindbergh.

Margaret, I agree. I really enjoyed The Color of Water.

"...one of the strangest, most wonderful families you're likely to meet." I didn't exactly get "wonderful" from Walls' portrayal of her family, more abusive and mortifying.

The Color of Water by James McBride is another great one.

My mother.- Richard Ford

My Two Moms by Zach Wahls.....

This Boy's Life by Tobias Wolff...It deserves to be on this list.

Why be happy when you can complain, yes, it's a story of childhood pain, it started with a slap, a gasp of air, my mum holding me while chugging beer - she gave me a long sip, wearing madness in her greasy slip and yes, precisely, this will be my life, to my mum, I am her wife, let's make it just a bit stranger, so I can write it all down, the great suffering deranger, it is the memorist's duty to sell her soul, a publisher's contract is the goal, the every bit of personal for sale, the one millionth youth in crisis tale.