Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations

Description

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, TIME, BUZZFEED, ESQUIRE, LIBRARY JOURNAL AND KIRKUS REVIEWS LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/OPEN BOOK AWARD 'Hilarious and heart-rending' Celeste Ng 'Heartbreaking, but also infused with levity and humour. What stands out most is the fierce compassion with which she parses the complexities of family and love' Time 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 - and 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. 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. 'Helps us think with grace and disarming wit ... Reading these searching, often hilarious tete-a-tetes is as effortless as eavesdropping on a crosstown bus ... Magic' New York Times Book Review 'Vibrant, inventive and vulnerable ... Good Talk attempts to answer, with humour and heart, some of the most difficult questions of all' Bustle 'Moving and very funny' Esquire

Mira Jacob is the author of the novel The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing, the co-founder of the Brooklyn literary night Pete's Reading Series and has contributed writings and drawings to the New York Times, Vogue, the Daily Telegraph and Shondaland. She teaches at NYU and the New School and lives in Brooklyn with her husband and son. mirajacob.com / @mirajacob

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 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 Good Talk isn't just Mira Jacob's personal story: it also illuminates the increasingly fractured world we live in. By turns hilarious and heart-rending, it plunges fearlessly into the murky grey areas of race and family, of struggling to find common ground, of trying to talk to our children and help them make sense of it all -- CELESTE NG, author of Little Fires Everywhere 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 A masterful mix of pictures and words to speak on life's most uncomfortable conversations * io9 * Good Talk begins with a child's innocent questions about race and evolves into an honest, direct and heartbreakingly funny journey ... 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 Searching, often hilarious ... [T]he medium is part of the magic of Good Talk. The old comic-book alchemy of words and pictures opens up new possibilities of feeling * New York Times Book Review * [A] moving and very funny graphic novel that explores identity, race, sexuality and love -- Best Books of 2019 * Esquire * [A] breezy but poignant graphic memoir that takes on racism, love and the election of President Trump ... The collage effect creates an odd, immediate intimacy ... 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) * Jacob's earnest recollections are often heartbreaking, but also infused with levity and humor. What stands out the most is the fierce compassion with which she parses the complexities of family and love. Jacob finds hope in the answers that come from asking hard questions * Time Magazine * Insightful ... Good Talk's visuals are simple but powerful, offering a witty and empathetic window into how to talk about - and live in - life's complexities * Entertainment Weekly *