The Talk

This graphic memoir by a Pulitzer Prize winner for Editorial Cartooning offers a deeply personal meditation on the “the talk” parents must have with Black children about racism and the brutality that often accompanies it, a ritual attempt to keep kids safe and prepare them for a world that—to paraphrase Toni Morrison—does not love them.

Darrin Bell was six years old when his mother told him he couldn’t play with a white friend’s realistic water gun. “She told me I’m a lot more likely to be shot by police than my friend was if they saw me with it, because police tend to think little Black boys—even light-skinned ones—are older than they really are, and less innocent than they really are.”

Bell examines how “the talk” has shaped nearly every moment of his life into adulthood and fatherhood. Through evocative original illustrations, The Talk is a meditation on this coming-of-age—as Bell becomes painfully aware of being regarded as dangerous by white teachers, neighbors, and strangers, and thus of his mortality. Drawing attention to the brutal murders of African Americans like Trayvon Martin and Eric Garner, and showcasing his award-winning cartoons along the way, Bell takes us up to the very moment of reckoning when people took to the streets protesting the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and when he must have “the talk” with a six-year-old son of his own.