In the ”Notes on my mother” Essay, Hilton Als talks about his Childhood growing up, and wanting to know  more about his mother, since his mother never really opened up to him. The first quote that I’ve chosen is, “All the women in my family wanted me to become a black male for the same reason: they wanted to define themselves against me.” Growing up, The author felt closer to being a woman than a man, henceforth the name he was given, “Auntie man.” He was confused on his identity, and focused more in his mother than he did on himself. Al’s family, (and like many families today) have an ideal image of how their sons or daughters should be, and being that Al’s wanted to be different, it goes against that code of normality for many people, and his family was not too happy with how he chose to live his life. The second quote I chose was “I avoided explaining that when I sat in parked cars with one man and then another, I felt closer to her experience of the world than I ever did in her actual presence.” The author knew of the experience his mother had with his father, and he went out to achieve that same lust in which his mother had felt. Unfortunately when his mother became sick, he tried to find more things they had in common, and anything that they can bond on with. Truthfully, the only similarity the two had were their interest in men. “I avoided explaining that I had been motivated by the same desire and romantic greed that had propelled her to move from Barbados to New York.”