Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations

Mira Jacob’s graphic novel opens with a series of difficult conversations she has with her six-year-old son, Z. The family lives in Brooklyn, New York in 2014. Mira is East Indian, and her husband Jed is Jewish. Z develops an obsession with Michael Jackson, which leads him to ponder skin color and ask his mom questions like, “Are you going to turn white?” (6). When Michael Brown is shot by a white police officer in Ferguson, Z sees the news on TV and asks his mom whether white people are afraid of brown people. Mira admits that is sometimes the case, to which Z responds, “Is Daddy afraid of us?” (17). Mira laments that she grew up in an America where racial tensions were high and people of color had fewer rights and privileges than white people, and she hoped that things would have evolved by the time she grew up. This seems not to be the case, with Black Lives Matter raging and “the rise of Donald Trump” (20). Mira knows she is going to encounter many more difficult conversations with Z surrounding race and wonders whether she is navigating those conversations properly.