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About Good Talk: A Memoir In Conversations
Product description A “beautiful and eye-opening” (Jacqueline Woodson), “hilarious and heart-rending” (Celeste Ng) graphic memoir about American identity, interracial families, and the realities that divide us, from the acclaimed author of The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing. NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Chicago Tribune • The New York Public Library • Publishers Weekly AND ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • Time • BuzzFeed • Esquire • Library Journal • Kirkus Reviews “How brown is too brown?” “Can Indians be racist?” “What does real love between really different people look like?” Like many six-year-olds, Mira Jacob’s half-Jewish, half-Indian son, Z, has questions about everything. At first they are innocuous enough, but as tensions from the 2016 election spread from the media into his own family, they become much, much more complicated. Trying to answer him honestly, Mira has to think back to where she’s gotten her own answers: her most formative conversations about race, color, sexuality, and, of course, love. Written with humor and vulnerability, this deeply relatable graphic memoir is a love letter to the art of conversation—and to the hope that hovers in our most difficult questions. LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/OPEN BOOK AWARD “Jacob’s earnest recollections are often heartbreaking, but also infused with levity and humor. What stands out most is the fierce compassion with which she parses the complexities of family and love.” —Time “ Good Talk uses a masterful mix of pictures and words to speak on life’s most uncomfortable conversations.” —io9 “Mira Jacob just made me toss everything I thought was possible in a book-as-art-object into the garbage. Her new book changes everything.” —Kiese Laymon, New York Times bestselling author of Heavy From School Library Journal Jacob's sophomore effort (after Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing) is a graphic memoir about race and family, set against the backdrop of the 2016 election and told through a series of conversations. At first, the book riffs off questions that Jacob's biracial six-year-old son, Z, asks. Some queries are simple: "Who is better, Michael Jackson or Michael Jordan?" Others reflect the child's internalization of messages from media and require more complex answers: "Is it bad to be brown?" Z's inquiries prompt memories that push Jacob to dig into her own childhood and behaviors through interactions with her immigrant parents and extended family in India. The author and her husband, Jed, talk about his white male privilege as a Jewish man and his family's conservative politics. Interactions with Jacob's friends allow her to process out loud some of the discussions described in previous scenes. The narrative spans generations, drawing parallels between Jacob and her son but also highlighting the lack of social progress. Aided by the skillful story structure, Jacob's no-holds-barred vulnerability compels reflection and empathy. The unique art style combines photographic backgrounds with illustrations of characters framed in white, like paper cutouts. Characters smartly break the fourth wall, looking directly at readers and inviting them into the narrative. Scenes of Jacob's past relationships with men and women depict nudity but nothing explicit. VERDICT A powerful, multilayered exploration of racial identity development and complicated family dynamics. Timely and necessary.—Alec Chunn, Eugene Public Library, OR Review “[I] loved it so so much. So poignant, honest, funny, powerful, and timely, and its themes build in a way that by the end is truly artistically transcendent.” —Curtis Sittenfeld, New York Times bestselling author of Prep and Eligible “Among its many virtues, Mira Jacob’s graphic memoir, Good Talk, helps us think through this term [‘person of color’] with grace and disarming wit. The book lives up to its title, and reading these searching, often hilarious tête-à-têtes is as effortless as eavesdropping on a crosstown bus. . . . The medium is part of the magic. . . . The old comic-book alchemy of words and pictures opens up new possibilities of feeling. . . . The people are black and white—except, of course, they’re not.” —Ed Park, The New York Times Book Review “ Good Talk addresses head-on the complexities of being fully American while also being fully Jewish, fully Indian, fully mixed, fully whatever in the era of Trump. . . . Good Talk attempts to answer, with humor and heart, some of the most difficult questions of all.” —Bustle “[A] showstopping memoir about race in America . . . by turns funny, philosophical, cautious, and heartbreaking . . . Particularly moving are the chapters in which Jacob explores how even those close to her retain closed-minded and culturally defined prejudices. . . . The memoir works well visually, with striking pen-and-ink drawings . . . collaged onto vibrant found photographs and illustrated backgrounds. . . . Told with immense bravery and candor, this book will make readers hunger for more of Jacob’s wisdom and light.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “Breezy but poignant . . . [Mira Jacob] employs pages of narrative prose sparingly but hauntingly. . . . The ‘talks’ Jacob relates are painful, often hilarious, and sometimes absurd, but her memoir makes a fierce case for continuing to have them.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) “A beautiful and eye-opening account of what it means to mother a brown boy and what it means to live in this country post–9/11, as a person of color, as a woman, as an artist . . . In Jacob’s brilliant hands, we are gifted with a narrative that is sometimes hysterically funny, always honest, and ultimately healing.” —Jacqueline Woodson, National Book Award–winning author of Another Brooklyn “ Good Talk begins with a child’s innocent questions about race and evolves into an honest, direct, and heartbreakingly funny journey. As a brown-skinned woman married to a Jewish man and the mother of a biracial child, I experienced this book on multiple levels: It broke my heart and made me laugh a helluva lot, but, in the end, it also forced me to ponder whether I have successfully provided the answers necessary to arm my own children against racism in America.” —Lynn Nottage, Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright of Sweat About the Author Mira Jacob is the author of the critically acclaimed novel The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing. Her recent work has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Vogue, Glamour, Tin House, Electric Literature and Literary Hub. She lives in Brooklyn.
