Among its many virtues, Mira Jacob’s graphic memoir helps us think through this term [POC] with grace and disarming wit. The book lives up to its title, and reading these searching, often hilarious tête-à-têtes—with her parents and brother, confidantes and strangers, employers and exes—is as effortless as eavesdropping on a crosstown bus ... Jacob zooms in and out, juxtaposes, crops. The figures work well as delivery systems for her dialogue, at times generating a deadpan humor, like the clip-art ciphers in David Rees’s Get Your War On ... the medium is part of the magic of Good Talk. The old comic-book alchemy of words and pictures opens up new possibilities of feeling.
Good Talk...is wise, serious, poignant, thought- provoking and funny. It’s also very, very necessary ... The topics? Race, mostly, but also love and sexuality, first against the backdrop of being the bisexual daughter of immigrants from India and then of being the mother of a mixed-race child during the time of Trump.
...[a] breezy but poignant graphic memoir that takes on racism, love, and the election of President Trump ... The collage effect creates an odd, immediate intimacy. She employs pages of narrative prose sparingly but hauntingly ... The 'talks' Jacob relates are painful, often hilarious, and sometimes absurd, but her memoir makes a fierce case for continuing to have them.
...[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 ... The memoir works well visually, with striking pen-and-ink drawings of Jacob and her family that are collaged onto vibrant found photographs and illustrated backgrounds ... Told with immense bravery and candor, this book will make readers hunger for more of Jacob's wisdom and light. The visual echoes between past and present make this extraordinary memoir about difficult conversations all the more powerful.
