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Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations

Mira Jacob (Goodreads Author)

4.43 · Rating details · 2,195 ratings · 439 reviews

A witty, heartfelt graphic memoir about what it truly means to be an American family--Aziz Ansari's Master of None meets Alison Bechdel's Fun Home

Mira Jacob's touching, often humorous, and utterly unique graphic memoir takes readers on her journey as a first-generation American. At an increasingly fraught time for immigrants and their families, Good Talk delves i ...more

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Hardcover, 349 pages

Published March 26th 2019 by One World

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Leo Gray and the Lunar Eclipse by K.J. Kruk

Goodreads Choice Awards 2019 (eligible for write-in only)

230 books — 46 voters

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· 2,195 ratings · 439 reviews

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May 30, 2019 Emily May rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: memoirs-or-bios, graphic-novels, 2019

“I'm supposed to be thankful for everything. Thank you for publishing me! Thank you for asking me to attend an event! Thank you for thanking me for writing characters you could relate to despite them being Indian! Thank you for saying you almost felt like they were just normal people!”

4 stars. Mira Jacob has done such an amazing job with this graphic memoir that it's hard to know what to praise first. The meditation on interracial families and racism in America? The mixed media artwork? The w

“I'm supposed to be thankful for everything. Thank you for publishing me! Thank you for asking me to attend an event! Thank you for thanking me for writing characters you could relate to despite them being Indian! Thank you for saying you almost felt like they were just normal people!”

4 ½ stars. Mira Jacob has done such an amazing job with this graphic memoir that it's hard to know what to praise first. The meditation on interracial families and racism in America? The mixed media artwork? The warm and funny dialogue between Mira and the characters?

I guess I'll start with the first one. Good Talk literally is a "memoir in conversations". It begins with Mira discussing Michael Jackson and race with her six-year-old son. In order to answer his questions about being Indian-American, being brown, being white, and just why Donald Trump got elected, Mira must examine those questions herself.

She takes us back to her parents' arranged marriage, then to them coming to America, then to her own childhood of being deemed ugly because she is dark-skinned, and then to later struggles with dating and publishing her manuscript with distinctly Indian names.

She covers so many things like white men fetishizing Indian women, interviewers explaining how things are in America even though she was born there herself, and her white Jewish in-laws supporting Trump because they don't believe he is actually racist. It all builds up to what we know is coming - the 2016 election - but her hope throughout that America will be better and not make that choice is, with hindsight, just very sad.

Jacob uses a combination of drawings and photography to tell her story, which also worked really well for me. She combines this style with some really sweet and funny dialogue, especially between Mira and her son. I love how the book manages to talk about really serious and important issues, but is also full of heartwarming and hilarious moments. Mira getting stoned with her Dad cracked me up.

A wonderful memoir and a quick read. I think I've made this obvious, but note that the book contains racism, Islamophobia and drug use.

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Apr 08, 2019 Elyse Walters rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Update... I'm back!! (2nd read).....physical book this time.
I can't say enough about this book!!!! After I listened to the Audiobook -- which I thought was BRILLIANT.... I ended up buying the physical -'graphic' book last week too.
Its AMAZING!!!!!
Mira Jacob outdid herself -A TRIPLE THREAT author, graphic artist, speaker: the storytelling of this MEMOIR, the graphics, READING her book -
I met Mira at a reading in Austin years ago (liked her very much) --read her first novel, "The Sleepwalker's Gu ...more

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Aug 08, 2018 Celeste Ng added it · review of another edition

GOOD TALK isn’t just Mira Jacobs'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 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. It's exactly the book America needs at this moment.

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May 31, 2019 Dianne rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: best-of-2019

I loved this graphic novel! It’s the author’s story of growing up as a person of color in the United States, with a special focus on raising her young son in a post 9-11 New York City. Her son has a lot of questions about race and her best attempts to answer them honestly are poignant.

Jacob uses an unusual visual format for her stories. She draws simple black and white portraits of herself and the main characters at certain ages and reuses those portraits repeatedly as dialogue occurs over the y ...more

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Apr 27, 2019 etherealfire rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Gutted. My heart breaks for our country and its completely unnecessary, self-inflicted wounds. My heart breaks for the damage we are doing to ourselves and each other. This is a must-read.

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Apr 28, 2019 Julie Ehlers rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: Everyone.

Shelves: comics-and-cartoons, free-library, books-that-are-awesome

Ever since I read Mira Jacob's 2015 Buzzfeed article about her son's obsession with Michael Jackson and the questions it raised (and subsequently began following her excellent Instagram account, @goodtalkthanks), I have been desperate to read Good Talk. I waited impatiently for the book to (finally!) be released, for my library to obtain a copy, for the copy to make it to my branch. When it (finally!) arrived just in time for my staycation, I was ECSTATIC. My expectations couldn't have been high Ever since I read Mira Jacob's 2015 Buzzfeed article about her son's obsession with Michael Jackson and the questions it raised (and subsequently began following her excellent Instagram account, @goodtalkthanks), I have been desperate to read Good Talk. I waited impatiently for the book to (finally!) be released, for my library to obtain a copy, for the copy to make it to my branch. When it (finally!) arrived just in time for my staycation, I was ECSTATIC. My expectations couldn't have been higher, is what I'm saying. Good Talk met them all.

In some ways, it's surprising that Good Talk worked as well as it did. Jacob is an excellent artist, but (as in the excerpt I linked to), she mostly uses the same images over and over again against different backgrounds. Somehow, this never got tedious for me; in fact, it was oddly effective to get familiar with these images and see them recur. Beyond that, the book was funny and quick and did not hesitate to ask hard questions and dive into uncomfortable situations and dilemmas regarding race. It all felt very real and couldn't be more timely; the parts regarding Trump's election felt so authentic, and authentically awkward, that it's hard to imagine the reader who wouldn't relate in some way.

Based on the Buzzfeed article, I'd expected Good Talk to be centered around Jacob's conversations with her son, but although those of course make up a significant portion of the book, this is actually a memoir of Jacob's entire life and career thus far, including her search for love, her beginnings as a writer, and the publication of her first novel. I was a bit surprised by this initially, but quickly realized this background not only made for a fuller reading experience but actually contributed to its main themes. Jacob's East Indian heritage, of course, is an inextricable part of her experience as an American, and these experiences, for better or worse, provide some of the book's most effective teaching moments.

Which may make the book sound grim. But somehow it's not grim. Well, it's not the most optimistic book out there, that's true. But it's a great read, everything I could have hoped for, and a valuable contribution to the conversations that have gained urgency across the U.S. and across the world in the past few years. I recommend it to everyone. ...more

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Mar 17, 2019 Jill rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

First a confession: from the advance blurb (“Who taught Michael Jackson to dance?” “Are white people afraid of brown people?”), my expectations for this book weren’t high. I suspected it might be another one of those feel-good, politically-correct books. But I loved Mira Jacob’s first novel, The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing, and on a whim, I decided to take a chance.

And – wow! This is the real deal, raw, wrenching, funny, fearless, and honest. Mira Jacob is an American of Indian descent, marri First a confession: from the advance blurb (“Who taught Michael Jackson to dance?” “Are white people afraid of brown people?”), my expectations for this book weren’t high. I suspected it might be another one of those feel-good, politically-correct books. But I loved Mira Jacob’s first novel, The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing, and on a whim, I decided to take a chance.

And – wow! This is the real deal, raw, wrenching, funny, fearless, and honest. Mira Jacob is an American of Indian descent, married to a Jewish man, and their young son, referred to here as Z, is an inquisitive boy who inherited her dark skin and her poignant need to understand the “lifetime caught between beautiful dream of a diverse nation and the complicated reality of one.”

Using her own illustrations to tell her story, Mira Jacobs walks us through pivotal moments in her back history. She recalls winning an essay contest, sponsored by the DAR, as a child. However, Mira wasn’t quite the “American” the DAR envisioned in granting her the prize. She highlights the “tragedy of my skin color” on visits back to India, where the fairer someone is, the more value they seem to have. She writes humorously about a Boston radio producer who wishes to interview her after her book is published but insists on pigeonholing her characters into some “Asian Indians” that his audience can fully understand.

But to me, the most wrenching part was the schism that occurs when her mother-in-law (who Mira loved enough to instantly call “mom”), decides to vote for Donald Trump at the same time that she and her young son are petrified of the racist undertones of his campaign. She asks her husband, “How can they see what this guy is about and support him! He’s stoking religious hatred! Racial hatred! How do they think this is going to affect our lives?” When her husband assures her that they love her, she answers, “You think they’d feel the same about me if I voted for an anti-Semite?” He answers, “They don’t see it that way.” She answers, “But it is that way.

If you are an apologist for Donald Trump, you’d best skip this book. But if you believe, as the author does, that our growth potential is tied into being “the kind of person who ass questions about who you are why things are the way they are, and what we could do to make them better,” then this is the book for you. ...more

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Apr 07, 2019 Sahitya rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2019-read, graphic-novels, aty52, non-fiction

I just stumbled upon this book on Twitter when the author Mira shared a couple of illustrations from the graphic novel about Indian aunties and I couldn’t stop laughing and I decided that I had to read it. However, I ended up not finding the graphic novel at my library and had to listen to the audiobook which turned out to be totally unexpected and wonderful in its own way.

This memoir is completely heartfelt, witty and hilarious while tackling very complex issues surrounding race in the America I just stumbled upon this book on Twitter when the author Mira shared a couple of illustrations from the graphic novel about Indian aunties and I couldn’t stop laughing and I decided that I had to read it. However, I ended up not finding the graphic novel at my library and had to listen to the audiobook which turned out to be totally unexpected and wonderful in its own way.

This memoir is completely heartfelt, witty and hilarious while tackling very complex issues surrounding race in the America of the current president. The author’s own growing up timeline felt familiar, irrespective of the fact that I grew up in India. The relationship she shared with her parents and relatives, their conversations and ideas and values all felt so relatable (not always in a good way though). When she talks about the colorism that she faced in India due to being darker toned than her parents and brother, it hit me very hard. Just like her, I too heard a lot growing up that my parents were going to have a tough time finding a guy for me because I wasn’t as fair as I used to be when I was a child. As a young well educated woman, I was constantly told I shouldn’t want to marry an equally highly educated man because neither was I very pretty nor was I rich enough to harbor such dreams. This whole idea of reducing a woman’s self worth to the color of her skin is still far too common in India even years after when the author’s own story takes place.

The other thing the author talks about is the othering she felt both while trying to date (as a bisexual woman of color) and as an aspiring author trying to make it. There are numerous occasions in the story where she encounters little statements or micro aggressions by white people, who are completely tone deaf and clueless as to how racist they come across. As an author, she has to explain to a radio producer that referring to her characters as Asian Indian instead of East Indian just so that Americans can understand it better is so darn ignorant. And all these little things just add up and go on and the author (like many other POC) doesn’t confront or argue with these people because that will not change anything. There is a frustration that is reflected in the author’s narration that I totally empathized with because it’s a reality for many of us.

And the most important and also the most difficult and heartbreaking parts of the book were her conversations with her six year old biracial son. He is an inquisitive little child always asking her lots of questions, which she wants to answer honestly - until he starts listening to the 2016 election campaign rhetoric on the news and wants to know if Trump hates him, if his white Jewish dad will have to give him and his mom up if Trump wins the election and has lots of questions about racism and prejudice and more other issues that affect him profoundly - she doesn’t know how to answer them all in a way he can understand, but can’t avoid them either because they will affect his daily life. When Mira has to explain to him that his Trump supporting republican grandparents still love him, he is truly confused and wants to beg them not to vote for him and it broke her heart along with mine. The line “sometimes the people who love you will choose a world that doesn’t” is still haunting me hours after finishing the book. While she spent the election night with her husband and their friends lamenting on the result (and also not feeling completely surprised by it), I was all alone in my home reeling with what I was seeing on tv - but the thoughts that were running through our head were the same. These conversations that she has with her kid and everything she is grappling with about her son’s future, are the same I think about when I envision having a kid who will probably be born American, but will ultimately always be defined by their skin color.

I have read in other reviews that the author’s illustration style is amazing but the full cast audio (with music and situational background score) is absolutely spectacular and I would highly recommend this format too. This book is very thought provoking and funny and also sad and I think POC readers will find some very relatable experiences in it. Thats not to say others won’t, but I feel people who have lived these experiences will have a unique appreciation for this book. ...more

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Apr 08, 2019 Jessica Woodbury rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: nonfiction, authors-of-color, best-2019-arcs, graphic-novels-comics, memoir

It is amazing to me how much Jacob fits into this book, how much it manages to contain, and how much it says not just about Jacob herself but about the present moment we live in. This is not just a book about raising a precocious biracial child in a world that treats his two parents very differently, that is just an entry point for Jacob to examine all the different parts of her life where these difficult issues have come up.

The parental anxiety factor here is high and I felt it really deeply. It is amazing to me how much Jacob fits into this book, how much it manages to contain, and how much it says not just about Jacob herself but about the present moment we live in. This is not just a book about raising a precocious biracial child in a world that treats his two parents very differently, that is just an entry point for Jacob to examine all the different parts of her life where these difficult issues have come up.

The parental anxiety factor here is high and I felt it really deeply. My kids are close to the age of Jacob's son, and while they don't have his particular precocious awareness of the world, even if your child doesn't ask you these questions directly you still have to think about how to have conversations with your kids about things your parents may have never talked about with you.

Jacob jumps through time to her own childhood in mostly-white Albuquerque: the colorism of her Indian relatives, her own lack of awareness and built-in biases; her adulthood in Brooklyn: the fears of 9/11, her frustration with her family's desire that she marry a certain kind of Indian man, her work as a writer, and parenthood. There are all kinds of small stories but they meld together to make something really meaningful and resonant. The slow pace of writing and publishing means we still don't have many books that look at the anxieties of the Trump era, Jacob's does it so effectively, capturing her own fears, the often-unusual worries of her son, and the contrast between those and her white husband's family.

I sped through this in one tearful sitting. I really enjoyed her previous novel and I admit to being a little hesitant about the style of this one. But after a few pages of getting used to it, I was quickly drawn in and found that the simplicity of the style made such a stark contrast to the complexity of the emotions Jacob taps into that it worked for me really, really well. I wish I could go back in time and tell myself that this is a book where you need to just trust. Even though I'd seen excerpts, it is the whole of it all together that really makes it work. ...more

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Mar 28, 2019 Kasa Cotugno rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: genre-graphic, genre-biography-memoir, arc, loc-usa-nyc, subj-trump-era

Of all the books dealing with the effects of the ascension of Donald Trump upon the American people, this one has been the most personal. In this beautifully realized graphic memoir, Mira Jacob tells her story of growing up as a first generation Indian, of her marriage to Jed, a Jewish man, and her attempts to answer some of the questions posed by their perceptive son from the age of six, questions about skin color and the ramifications of different hues. But all this is background, leading to t ...more

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Jun 18, 2019 Vanessa rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I wasn’t expecting to enjoy this graphic novel as much as I did. But boy did this book pack an unexpected punch! Written in conversation style, it’s a completely unique and interesting perspective on race and immigration during this current crazy political climate and the difficult questions that only a young kid knows how to ask. It makes you mad that these conversations are even necessary! But I enjoyed the interactions between Mira and her son. There is humour in between the seriousness of th ...more

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Apr 22, 2019 Vivek Tejuja rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

We don’t know what life has in store for us till it flings itself in our faces. Then we know. Then we truly begin to see as it unfolds itself. Mira Jacob’s Good Talk is not just a memoir. It isn’t just a conversation. It is so much more that as I sit and type this, I literally have gooseflesh.

It is a book about identity, about interracial marriage, about when do we know we are citizens of a country? Is there a certificate that gets handed out? We are constantly seeking validation about ourselve ...more

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Jun 26, 2019 Skip rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: biography, graphic-novels

Kudos to Mira Jacob for providing a light-hearted, but thoughtful and thought-provoking look at our currently fractured nation. Presented as a graphic memoir, she touches on many important societal issues, including family, love, marriage, religion, racism and racial tropes, politics, immigration, and more. She writes from personal experience, being US-born woman, whose parents immigrated from India, who marries a white Jewish man, and is raising an inquisitive son, Jacob. Many of the chapters a ...more

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Mar 29, 2019 Bruce Katz rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: memoir

All the good things people are saying about this book are true. It's smart, eye-opening, provocative, funny, touching, courageous, heartbreakingly honest, and damned necessary... You know that line in Hamlet about how it is the role of art to 'hold a mirror up to nature'? Yeah,"Good Talk" does precisely that. The seemingly bare-bones format of dialogue balloons placed on simple illustrations gives the book an immediacy and power that more traditional approaches would have neutered. Jacob takes a ...more

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Feb 10, 2019 Jill Meyer rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Mira Jacob has really written - and drawn - a memoir for our times. Jacob, the author of a marvelous novel, "The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing", published in 2014, has written "Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations", a graphic work using text, drawings, and photographs to try to distill some of the angst in our society brought on by the election of Donald Trump in 2016. But the angst that Jacob felt for her and her young son actually began years before as the American-born daughter of Indian imm Mira Jacob has really written - and drawn - a memoir for our times. Jacob, the author of a marvelous novel, "The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing", published in 2014, has written "Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations", a graphic work using text, drawings, and photographs to try to distill some of the angst in our society brought on by the election of Donald Trump in 2016. But the angst that Jacob felt for her and her young son actually began years before as the American-born daughter of Indian immigrants to the United States.

Jacab's story goes back and forth between 2016 and times before. When we flash between the present and the past, the transitions tend to deal with how Jacob has faced a sense of alienation about her darker-than-blonde-blue-eyed looks. (It's probably good that she grew up in Albuquerque which is a pretty good melting pot. Edina, Minnesota, say, might have been a bit tougher.) Her skin was a bit darker than her parents and older brother, which brought on non-PC comments from her Indian relatives, who emphasised the "value" of lighter skin, particularly in the marriage-game. But Mira grew up a smart kid - despite some incidents - and moved to New York City after college. She met again a young man who'd grown up with her in New Mexico, they married, and had a son. Her husband was Jewish and so, of course, the boy was a combination Jewish and South Asian.

Much of the book is devoted to trying to understand her son's fears of the world around him as Donald Trump emerges as first the Republican candidate for President, and then, as the elected president. "Z", her son, sees his paternal grandparents as Trump supporters and worries they won't love him. Jacob and her husband walk the fine line of respecting his parents without respecting their political choices. There was a lot of that in the nervous time of the election and many of us have reevaluated some of our friendships with others, others who may have voted a different way than we did.

Mira Jacob's fine book deserves a wide readership. She articulates many of our own worries about the future of our great country. "Good Talk" is indeed "good talk". ...more

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Jun 02, 2019 Sara rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: graphic-novel, contemporary, political, memoir

****MUST READ****

Graphic novel memoir about being brown in Trump's America....and just always America. True, funny, painful, excellent, and innovative photo/art/text images.

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May 25, 2019 Kate ☀️ Olson rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: adult-reads, nonfiction, graphic-format, aoc

Stunning. That’s all.

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Mar 26, 2019 Kristina rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

“I can’t protect you from everything. I can’t protect you from being a brown man in America. I can’t protect you from spending a lifetime caught between the beautiful dream of a diverse nation and the complicated reality of one. I can’t even protect you from the simple fact that sometimes, the people who love us will choose a world that doesn’t.”

This graphic novel I purchased for my library is so spectacularly special, I loved it!! If this isn’t listed as one of the best graphic novels by the e “I can’t protect you from everything. I can’t protect you from being a brown man in America. I can’t protect you from spending a lifetime caught between the beautiful dream of a diverse nation and the complicated reality of one. I can’t even protect you from the simple fact that sometimes, the people who love us will choose a world that doesn’t.”

This graphic novel I purchased for my library is so spectacularly special, I loved it!! If this isn’t listed as one of the best graphic novels by the end of this year, I’ll be shocked. The medium is very interesting, it’s as if she used cutouts, almost like paper dolls, pasted on photos of her own or from elsewhere like a stock photo. It’s very unique and a powerful way to convey storytelling, especially that this is a memoir. It’s slightly similar to Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home, but that reads almost like a scrapbook. Both are incredibly creative.

Mira Jacob is a bestselling author of Indian descent whose son posed several difficult questions from a young age about the color of his skin especially after overhearing Trump on the television. Mira is married to a Jewish man, so her son is half Indian and half Jewish. The fear spurred by Trump’s racism caused her son to question his similarities to Muslims and his worry over them being forced to leave the country. Mira explains the predicament of being completely honest with her child, and simultaneously wanting to withhold some truth to protect him.

Things are further complicated when her Jewish mother and father in-law fully support Trump despite the overwhelming evidence of his racism and inadequacy (idiocy). As Jacob writes toward the end as a message to her son “....sometimes, the people who love us will choose a world that doesn’t.”

Good Talk is about Mira and her relationship with her son. Peppered throughout her life are frustratingly ignorant remarks about her race involving a radio producer, wannabe authors, white men in general... it’s endless. Mira even remembers an incident at her mother in-law’s home where her guests thought she was there to serve them. And what Mira reveals upset her the most was having her mother in law say “I just can’t imagine anyone doing that” when in fact she told her they did.

Mira’s honesty about feeling clouded, and the heaviness and quietness that surrounds her while trying to do what’s right for herself and her family, is inspiring. She wants what is best for her son. She forces her husband to acknowledge his privilege as a white man, and the differences in their everyday experiences whether it be confidence or over careers.

I can recommend this book enough. ...more

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Apr 02, 2019 Basic B's Guide rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Thank you @randomhouse for a free copy of GOOD TALK by Mira Jacob.

When I originally heard about GOOD TALK, I thought immediately that this is a book I NEED to read. A graphic memoir in conversations with a six-year old? Wow! I had never heard of such a thing. Having found out that Jacob’s both illustrated and wrote this graphic novel my gut said take a chance and I’m so incredibly grateful that I did.

This memoir of conversations covers race, family, immigration, political climate in the U.S. and ...more

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Jul 10, 2019 Doug rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I don't read many graphic novels - the format just doesn't quite appeal to me - so this might be my ONLY one for 2019... but that's ok, because it would probably be my favorite one anyway! I adored Jacob's first novel (The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing) and in my review of that I stated I hoped it wouldn't be another ten years before her next book (since it had taken her that long to write her first).

I'm glad it only took five, and this comes at JUST the right time, since it deals largely with ...more

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Jun 26, 2019 Elizabeth A rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: memoir, graphix, non-fiction, 2019

Being of person of color in America is not easy. Oh, sure, it's easier in many ways than it's ever been, but it's not easy. Being a biracial/multiracial kid makes things even more complicated.

This graphic memoir doesn't read like a a usual comic. The subtitle: A Memoir in Conversations is apt, and the lives of these people unfold via conversations. The author is of South Asian descent, has a biracial kid, and lives in the US. This memoir tackles the complexities of immigrant families, sexuality, ...more

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May 21, 2019 Kelly added it · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, audio-book, read-in-2019, comics-graphic-novels-and-memoirs

One of the best audiobooks I've listened to in a long time -- I didn't even know this was a graphic memoir, since I went straight to audio for it, and I missed out on nothing by choosing that format over the print one. Performed by a full-cast, it was very much a series of conversations about race and growing up in the margins of America.

When Mira's son asked about being mixed race, it spurs a series of memoirs for Mira about growing up Indian-American and all of the macro and micro aggressions ...more

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Jun 16, 2019 Lori Gottlieb rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

One perk of writing a book is that you get to meet other authors while on tour. I had the pleasure of doing a reading with Mira Jacobs at The Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. I'd heard of her book but hadn't yet read it, and after she shared it with the audience (projecting the illustrations and reading the text), I immediately bought a copy (and--again, perk!--got it signed). I was blown away by how inventive and brilliant this memoir is. I've never read anything quite like it. It's heartbreakin ...more

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Mar 30, 2019 Christine rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: own, 2019, graphic-novels-comics, memoir, nonfiction

Love love loved this

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May 03, 2019 Andrea rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: memoirs

THIS!!!

THIS is what you should read next. Nope. THIS is what you should listen to next. Audio production was phenomenal.

THIS is just the 3rd book of the year that I’ve awarded 5 full stars. Because I’m stingy and save those precious stars for only the exceptional ones that make my mind and heart bounce in all directions.

THIS is likely the book “America needs right now.” Because we really do need to hear Mira to understand a reality and point of view we’ve likely never personally experienced.

I ...more

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Apr 20, 2019 Rod Brown rated it liked it

There is a lot of touching and insightful comments in here about race, families, September 11, and the elections of Donald Trump and Barack Obama. If the author had chosen to make this entirely prose or had had another artist draw it, I would probably have given it four stars. But instead, she chose to illustrate it herself in an extremely unfortunate and distracting style.

Effectively, she has made the book version of a YouTube video starring paper doll puppets on ice cream sticks. She literally ...more

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Oct 30, 2018 Lauren rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Told with humor and a blunt honesty I love, Mira Jacob’s graphic memoir is really a memoir in two parts: Part one is Mira growing up in New Mexico in the 80’s and 90’s, wrestling with her own questions and experiences regarding race, sexuality, and love. Part two focuses on our country in its current political climate as her son begins to question everything from Michael Jackson’s changing skin color to why Trump would be angry at him for being brown.

Very serious topics, but everything Mira Jac ...more

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Feb 14, 2019 Emily rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: parenting, memoir, graphic-novel, asian-american

What a beautiful, funny, heartbreaking perfect book this is. Conversations with her six-year-old son about race in America, spurred by the 2016 election, frame flashbacks to Jacob's childhood and early adulthood. The dialogue is especially great - the voices of her son, her husband, her parents, and her in-laws shine.

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Apr 25, 2019 Abby Johnson added it · review of another edition

Shelves: diverse, author-of-color, memoir

Once I picked this book up, I absolutely could not put it down - a one-sitting read (or as close as I get to it, anyway). Mira Jacob starts the book with a conversation with her biracial 6-year-old son who is starting to get obsessed with Michael Jackson and has a lot of questions about the color of his skin. Conversations with her young son about race and racism and Trump and immigrants and hate and violence are all interspersed with Mira's experiences growing up as a child of East Indian immig ...more

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Apr 11, 2019 Jonathan Tennis rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This is one of those rare times on Goodreads where I wish there were more than 5-stars for incredible books. This powerful memoir told in conversations between the author and her family/friends about what it’s like to be brown in America in modern times. Brave, funny, witty, brutally honest. This book was so good to read and I’m glad it was written. Pick up a copy and see for yourself.

From pg. 83 is this exchange between the author and her son.
“There are no brown superheroes. Really? Still?” – ...more

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About Mira Jacob

Mira Jacob

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I am the author and illustrator of Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations. My first novel, The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing, was a Barnes & Noble Discover New Writers pick, shortlisted for India’s Tata First Literature Award, and longlisted for the Brooklyn Literary Eagles Prize.

My writing and drawings have appeared in The New York Times, Electric Literature, Tin House, Literary Hub, Guernica, ...more

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“There's a particular kind of close you get when you find someone you can trust in a space you don't.” — 4 likes

“I'm supposed to be thankful for everything. Thank you for publishing me! Thank you for asking me to attend an event! Thank you for thanking me for writing characters you could relate to despite them being Indian! Thank you for saying you almost felt like they were just normal people! [...] Thank you for telling me you wish you had been brave enough to date the Indian girls in high school! Thank you for asking me about whether or not you should take a vacation to India! Thank you for telling me that your Indian neighbor makes your hallway smell like curry! Thank you for apologizing for hating curry, like I am curry's mother!” — 3 likes

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