Before joining bookstagram, I would hesitate to pick up graphic novels, assuming they lacked the depth and substance that I usually like in my reads. But after hearing all the praise for Good Talk, I decided to grab it from the library right before quarantine started and boy was I not disappointed!

Good Talk is a memoir, but it also transcends Mira Jacob’s own story to comment on what it is like to be a POC in modern America. It alternates between the time leading up to 9/11, when Mira is a young writer making her way in the world, and the present period around the 2016 election. She tells the readers about the micro aggressions and outright aggressions she has experienced in her life.
Particularly poignant and heartbreaking were the scenes where she has to try to explain Trump to her young son, who doesn’t understand what is happening in their country. I also really appreciated the scenes with her white husband, who is her ally but also doesn’t quite understand what she is going through because of his own background and skin color.

This felt like a timely memoir to read, given the recent deaths of Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor. Though Jacob is of Indian descent, she reveals the prejudices and hatred that exist in this country and enable gruesome murders of innocent people.

TW: racism; sexism