Good Talk
A Memoir in Conversations
by Mira Jacob
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Pub Date Apr 04 2019 | Archive Date Jun 21 2019
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Description
'By turns hilarious and heart-rending. 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
'Who taught Michael Jackson to dance?'
'Is that how people really walk on the moon?'
'Is it bad to be brown?'
'Are white people afraid of brown people?'
Inspired by her viral BuzzFeed piece '37 Difficult Questions from My Mixed-Raced Son', Mira Jacob responds to: her six-year-old, Zakir, who asks if the new president hates brown boys like him; uncomfortable relationship advice from her parents, who came to the United States from India one month into their arranged marriage; and increasingly fraught exchanges with her Trump-supporting in-laws. Jacob also investigates her own past, including how it felt to be a brown-skinned New Yorker on 9/11. As earnest and moving as they are laugh-out-loud funny, these are the stories that have shaped one life, but will resonate with many others.
Advance Praise
‘Good Talk illuminates the increasingly fractured world we live in. By turns hilarious and heart-rending, it plunges fearlessly into the murky gray 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, New York Times bestselling author of Little Fires Everywhere
‘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 hysterical, 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
‘Children ask us hard questions—good questions—even when we’re not yet ready to answer them. (Maybe we don’t know the answer, but we still need to listen). Children ask us about race, about violence, about what is and isn’t fair, about death and if there’s life after it. These conversations can be heart-breaking. Or, as in this talk with her son that the brilliant Mira Jacob illustrated, they can be hilarious—and also just the beginning of a longer, ongoing, dialogue about identity. Jacob is one of my favorite contemporary storytellers combining words, images, and wit.’
Meg Lemeke, PEN America
FEATURED IN:
‘66 Books Coming In 2019 That You'll Want To Keep On Your Radar’ Buzzfeed News
‘37 Books We Can’t Wait to Read in 2019’ Vulture
‘Visual Disobedience: A Reading List’ PEN America
‘35 Books To Look Forward To In 2019’ Huffington Post India
‘16 works of nonfiction from around the world to check out in spring 2019’ CBC Books
Available Editions
| EDITION | Hardcover |
| ISBN | 9781408880166 |
| PRICE | £16.99 (GBP) |
