Nadja Spiegelman: I'm Supposed to Protect You from All This

Nadja Spiegelman's mother is Francoise Mouly, art editor of the New Yorker. Her father is graphic novelist Art Spiegelman, author of Maus. As a child, she asked her larger-than-life mother when will she become a magical fairy like her. When you're 16, her mother answered. In her memoir, I'm Supposed to Protect You from All This (Riverhead Books) she recounts her search for autonomy and truth. She is reared by a mother and grandmother described as forces of nature. Since memory is not only malleable but unreliable, which version of the truth will prevail? Who will win control of the narrative -- the daughter who is defining herself through the process of writing or the loving, formidable mother and grandmother? Or will they achieve a shared past by acknowledging differing versions of it?