"Let's get one thing straight: My mom was the COOLEST"
"In 2008, the summer after my first year of college, [my mom] was diagnosed with cancer. By spring break my sophomore year, she was dead. Not to be melodramatic, but it was THE WOOORST."
Dancing at the Pity Party is an autobiographical 2020 graphic novel by Tyler Feder. It catalogs her experience of how, when Tyler was a college sophomore in 2008/9, her supercool mom Rhonda died of cancer. The book explores Tyler's relationship to her mom prior to her diagnosis, and the aftermath of dealing with the decade-long grief of her mother's passing.
The graphic novel provides examples of:
- Autobiography: The book is a recount of the author's real life related to her relationship with her mom.
- Birthday Hater: Tyler has negative feelings associated with her birthday because each one means she is getting closer to being older than her mom ever was. She imagines she'll have a major freak out on her forty-eighth birthday because her mom died at age forty-seven.
- Black Comedy: The primary form of humor in the novel. The book is ultimately light-hearted, yet considering it focuses on the author's mom dying of cancer, there aren't too many other options for types of comedy.
- Brick Joke: Early on in the book, Tyler states that her and her mom had a Running Gag where Rhonda would say "Aren't you glad I'm not [redacted]?"note Near the end, Tyler says she wouldn't swap the nineteen years she spent with her mom for a hundred years with any other mom - especially not [redacted]!
- Coordinated Clothes: Tyler mentions that sometimes she purposefully picks out clothes similar to ones her mom used to wear based off old photographs.
- Deceased Parents Are the Best: Rhonda was, in Tyler's own words, the coolest, but she unfortunately died from uterine cancer which was incredibly painful for Tyler and her entire family.
- Does Not Like Spam: Rhonda didn't like cream cheese. When her daughters get a key lime pie (Rhonda's Trademark Favorite Food) in remembrance of her birthday, they remark that she probably wouldn't like the one they're eating because it's too cheesy.
- Gender-Blender Name: Tyler and both of her sisters (Cody and Spencer) have names that are traditionally masculine.
- Good Parents: Oh, boy, Rhonda Feder. The entire book catalogs how much Tyler admired and loved her mom, and how difficult living without her was and continues to be.
- Imagine Spot: One of the chapters details Tyler fantasizing about what a "dead mom club" would be. She dreams up of her and a bunch of other people with deceased moms hanging out in a clubhouse, where they have stuff like a fridge stocked with comfort food and a tissue box that is half the size of said fridge.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: When Tyler is suggesting cliche grief remedies that actually work, one thing she suggest is drawing angsty art about it. The image she provides for an example of this is the cover of the book.
- Like Mother, Unlike Daughter: Downplayed. Tyler is certainly like her mom in important ways, but one silly way they differ is that Rhonda was meticulous about body hair grooming. She even insisted upon shaving her legs before going into labor as she didn't want the first thing her daughter touched to be hairy legs. In response to this, Tyler jokingly remarks that she shaves about three times a year.
- Mood Whiplash: Tyler mentions that sometimes, she regards her mom's death and cancer diagnosis as being like a story she knows by her heart. The drawing accompanied by this is a bookcase featuring classic fairy tales like Thumbelina next to a giant book that says "THAT TIME MOM GOT CANCER AND DIED AND IT WAS HORRIBLE."
- The Topic of Cancer: Even when they initially searching for the answer to Rhonda's painful stomach issues, no one suspected cancer. When Tyler learned her parents scheduled an appointment with an oncologist, she fell into a spiral of terror.
- Trademark Favorite Food: Rhonda is mentioned to love key lime pie, to the point where her daughters eat one every year on her birthday in remembrance. She is also mentioned to like anything that involved mushrooms.
