Alison Bechdel’s Are You My Mother?: Audio discussion and podcast.

The Audio Book Club Reads Are You My Mother?

The Audio Book Club Reads Are You My Mother?

Slate
The Audio Book Club
Discussing new and classic works.
June 1 2012 11:32 PM

The Audio Book Club on Are You My Mother?

Our critics on cartoonist Alison Bechdel’s follow-up to Fun Home.

Slate's Audio Book Club illustration by Robert Neubecker

Illustration by Robert Neubecker

To listen to the Audio Book Club discussion of Are You My Mother?, click the arrow on the player below.

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Slate Book Review editor Dan Kois, Slate editor Emily Bazelon, and Slate critic Meghan O’Rourke discuss Alison Bechdel’s graphic memoir Are You My Mother?, a meditation on acceptance, psychoanalysis, and the ties that bind from the author of the best-selling Fun Home. O’Rourke found the book immensely moving, especially in its parallels to the story she recently told in her own memoir. Kois and Bazelon were less convinced that the book was as effective as its predecessor in telling a moving, complete story about a single family. While you’re listening, you can also read O’Rourke’s review of Are You My Mother? from the May issue of the SBR.

Next month’s Audio Book Club selection is Fifty Shades of Grey, the Twilight fan fiction turned mega-best-selling book of erotica by E. L. James. So read Fifty Shades on the beach—or, more likely, reread your already well-thumbed copy—and join Kois, O’Rourke, and DoubleX editor Hanna Rosin for our discussion on June 29.

Visit our Audio Book Club archive page for a complete list of the more than 50 books we’ve discussed over the years. Or you can listen to any of our previous club meetings through our iTunes feed or through the player below.

See all the pieces in this month’s Slate Book Review.
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Podcast produced by Chris Wade and Andy Bowers.

Emily Bazelon is a staff writer at the New York Times Magazine and the author of Sticks and Stones.

Dan Kois edits and writes for Slate’s human interest and culture departments. He’s the co-author, with Isaac Butler, of The World Only Spins Forward, a history of Angels in America, and is writing a book called How to Be a Family.

Meghan O’Rourke is Slate’s culture critic and an advisory editor. She was previously an editor at the New Yorker. The Long Goodbye, a memoir about her mother’s death, is now out in paperback.