Becoming a mother is a deeply transformational experience that shifts every aspect of identity. This metamorphosis is often overlooked as much of the focus in society is placed on the baby and the baby’s development. The oversimplified narratives that demand mothers to hide the complexities of their own journey leave little room for women to embrace the full spectrum of what it means to become a mother in all wonder and torment.
In recent years, there has been an explosion of graphic memoirs about motherhood. The mix of illustrations and words can help to show the fluidity of maternal identity and all the dualities that come along with it in a way that words alone cannot fully capture. Mothers can find joy in a new life, while at the same time grieve parts of themselves they’ve lost. Mothers can love intensely, but that intensity comes with the cost of exhaustion. Newfound power and strength coexist with vulnerability and fear. Motherhood transforms how we exist in the world, but it also changes both the world around us.
For me, early motherhood inspired a creative transformation. I drew whenever I got the chance about the oddness, tragedy, and ecstasy of becoming a mother. My book The Mother is about constant push and pull. I desperately wanted a baby, yet I was terrified of actually being pregnant and having one. I lurched into a new identity and grieved my old self. When she was born, I loved my baby fiercely, but yearned for my previous relationship with my partner. The Mother is also about struggling with some of my early childhood experiences in order to be able to love and care for my own child.
These graphic memoirs below explore the emotional, psychological, and physical transformation of motherhood. These writers offer diverse perspectives on how this role shapes not just mothers, but also the relationships we have with our children and the people around us.
Kid Gloves by Lucy Knisley
Lucy Knisley has dreamt of being a mother her whole life. But when it was finally the perfect time, conceiving turned out to be far more challenging than anything she’s ever faced. In Kid Gloves, Knisley opens up about her struggle with fertility, including multiple miscarriages. When finally she has a pregnancy that lasts, she encounters unexpected health complications, including misdiagnoses and a near-death experience while in labor. Alongside her personal journal, Knisely delves into the weird and shocking history of reproductive health. Her illustrations illuminate the often-spoken struggles surrounding fertility, the intricate workings of the body, and the painful, messy, and sometimes traumatic experiences that can come with trying to become pregnant.
Dear Scarlet: The Story of My Postpartum Depression by Teresa Wong
Dear Scarlet is written as a letter from the author to her daughter as she reveals the difficult and painful experience of postpartum depression following her daughter’s birth. In black and white drawings, Wong describes how she wrestles with constant negative thoughts about her inadequacy as a mother, her overwhelming sadness, and her desire to disappear. She feels constantly tired and alone, burdened by a darkness that clouds her every thought. It is only when she receives a diagnosis that she starts to feel some relief, recognizing that the darkness she feels isn’t just a personal failing, but something that can be treated. The honest and funny graphic memoir is a poignant reflection of mental health and the journey toward healing.
Shadowlife by Hiromi Goto, illustrated by Ann Xu
Shadowlife follows Kumiko, a headstrong and wilful elderly woman who refuses to follow the end-of-life care plans her daughters have laid out for her. Determined to be independent, she finds an apartment on her own where she battles the spirits of death and reconnects with a past love. As she approaches the end, Kumiko wrestles with letting go of her identity as a mother and the maternal responsibilities to her daughters that she’s carried for so long, turning to a newfound sense of childlike joy and curiosity of life, despite her failing body.
Are You My Mother? by Alison Bechdel
Bechdel, who found success as a writer with Fun Home—her acclaimed graphic memoir about her relationship with her deceased father, a closeted gay man—turns her gaze to her mother in this follow-up. Are You My Mother? uses psychoanalysis as a lens to examine Bechdel’s complicated feelings about her mother, an emotionally withholding woman who expressed disapproval about the way Bechdel has written about their family. The book jumps back and forth through time, in and out of dreams, as she deciphers her thoughts and fears using insights from child psychoanalyst, Donald Winnicott. Bechdel clearly feels catharsis in her writing as she explores parenting, identity, sexuality and queerness, and recognizing her patterns of looking for maternal surrogates in her therapists, girlfriends, and in the works of famous women writers.
The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui
The Best We Could Do tells the story of Thi Bui’s family as they escape the Vietnam war by boat to a refugee camp in Malaysia, before eventually resettling in the United States. The story starts in New York City with Thi Bui as a new mother to a baby boy, before traveling to the past as she recounts her parents’ pain, dreams, and loss through the eyes of her childhood self. A beautiful poignant exploration of family history, sacrifice, and starting anew.
Good Talk by Mira Jacob
In Good Talk, Mira Jacob takes readers through her intimate conversations with her son, partner, friends and family about race in America. Her six-year-old asks her difficult questions about race in America. She answers with as much honesty as she can, using these moments to explore what it means to be a mother of color raising a half-Jewish, half-Indian child in America. The conversations in this book are vulnerable, moving, uncomfortable, and deeply funny.
It Won’t Always Be Like This by Malaka Gharib
Dedicated to her former step mother, It Won’t Always Be Like This is a touching and beautifully illustrated story about Malaka Gharib’s relationships with her family in Egypt. When she’s nine, Malaka goes to her father’s homeland for her annual summer vacation and learns that her father has remarried. The story unfolds over the following summers as she grows closer to her stepmother, navigates the ebbs and flows of her relationship with her father and her step-siblings. A beautiful ode to stepmothers.