Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations

Good Talk may initially appear a bit flat — literally so, given Mira Jacob’s decoupage drawing style — but this unfailingly perceptive and honest memoir-in-conversations will stun you with its depth. This book is humorous, moving, and raises all the right questions about parenting, race, and gender in contemporary America. Recommended By Keith M., Powells.com

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.

"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

"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

"[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. . . . Told with immense bravery and candor, this book will make readers hunger for more of Jacob's wisdom and light." Kirkus Reviews (Starred 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

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.