Book Reflections: Good Talk

By Stef W

I don’t know about you, but the pandemic has been a mixed success for me when it comes to finding the time to want to sit down and read. While there were (are) endless hours to fill, it felt like my motivation and focus was burning off like morning fog. That’s a pretty lame reason to have chosen to read the graphic novel, “Good Talk” by Mira Jacob, but here we are. I thought that maybe a graphic novel would be more accessible and less burdensome for my anxiety-riddled brain.

And honestly, that was not too far off the mark. “Good Talk” is self-described as “A Memoir In Conversations” as Jacob unpacks a lifetime of navigating being a Brown woman in white America. The images are a combination of illustration and photos, presented as a collage that provides the backdrop for the conversations. They provide a frankness and a directness to these exchanges that underscore the fact that real life people actually said these words. 

Born in New Mexico to parents who had immigrated to the US from India so that her father could become a cardiovascular surgeon, Jacob’s childhood and adolescence had a healthy dose of racism from every angle: teachers, classmates, neighbors—even her family in India bemoaned the darkness of her skin and encouraged her to lighten it. Her marriage to a Jewish man and the birth of their child lead to complicated conversations with her parents, in-laws, and even her own son about the nature of what it means to be, well, not white in America.

Jacob is deftly unflinching in her writing. The dialogue is funny, self-depreciating, yet often searing. She gives an account of the ways that she has both internalized racism and been on its receiving end. Her account of being a woman of color in a post-9/11 New York is gutting. Her friends and family vacillate in their support and understanding of her experience, and we see the unraveling of some of those relationships almost in real time. It’s just charming enough to make you keep reading, just devastating enough to make you pause. 

Ultimately, Good Talk is a reminder that sometimes you can’t just talk it out, but you should probably still try. There is a great deal of courage and resilience to be found in the experiences and conversations Mira Jacob shares with us. There is also a great deal of hope even now, when it feels particularly thin on the ground.