This is a great graphic memoir for the world we are in right now. By focusing on the specifics of his own story, Bell tells a universal story that more people need to understand. He also does not make himself out to be perfect or above reproach, which is something that will make this more interesting to my young adult readers. The mostly monochromatic style allows the focus to be on the content of the work instead of too much flash and really makes the moments of color stand out.

The Talk is editorial cartoonist and Pulitzer Prize winner Darrin Bell's graphic memoir. From his childhood in L.A. as a biracial kid living with his white Jewish mother after his parent's divorce, to his experiences writing cartoons about major moments of the 21st century -- we see Darrin reconcile with life in America and the racism he faces. At times, this book is humorous and at others it is heartbreaking and tear-inducing, but it is always insightful. I read a lot of comics, but not a lot of comics for adults, so I wasn't sure how I'd like this one. I was pleasantly surprised and I think that adults and teens alike should read this raw and honest look at the life of Darrin Bell.

The Talk is a heartbreakingly honest look at the life of political cartoonist Darrin Bell, and how the issues of race in America have permeated his life. This graphic novel memoir begins with Darrin confronting two dogs, which inspires him to carry a rock for protection, and leads to his mother having a discussion with him when he was just six years old about how he wasn't allowed to have a toy water gun that looked like a real gun because of the color of his skin.

He grows up having to confront the prejudice and racism that he witnesses while also observing how those around him handle these issues. His brother seems fine with ignorance and avoidance, his mother bulldozes it as soon as she or her children are confronted with it, and his father shuts down emotionally. Through political cartoons, Bell is able to show the ways Americans are still entrenched in racism while exploring his own feelings in how the world views him and anyone else like him.

This is such an important memoir, easy to comprehend and powerful because of its medium, and highlights how different it is growing up Black in America. White kids never had to have a talk about race with their parents. White kids look at police officers as protectors rather than threats. Reading this makes my heart hurt and desperately wish things were different, and I hope everyone who reads this feels the same so that change can happen in a big way.

Thank you to NetGalley and Henry Holt & Co. for giving me advanced reader access to this title. It publishes on June 6, 2023, and should be required reading for anyone who thinks racism doesn't exist in today's society (well, and even everyone who does tbh).

This is such an important book and beautifully illustrated and told. I appreciated the author's insight into his own experiences with racism and what he has to tell his son in "the talk"

Wow! What a poignant graphic memoir. Darrin Bell does an amazing job sharing his story and I love the way he and his partner had ‘the talk’ with their son. I will be adding this one to the library!

Thanks to Netgalley, Darrin Bell, and the publisher for an eARC of this book! All opinions are my own!

This book is necessary, and I'm glad it exists. The subject matter will be difficult for some, because social and systemic issues are an ever present force. Micro-aggressions are like air. This is good, actually, because it is real and lived, and present, and not "ancient history." It's recent history. There is also so much honesty and heart presented here as Darrin gives readers his vibrantly colored shoes to walk in. The art is fluid, talentedly simplistic. Certain panels hit hard emotional notes. Hey, Mr. Bell? Thank you for sharing your story! And not just your story, but all the other stories that are remembered within here.

Graphic novels are not my usual genre, and this one was not at all what I anticipated. First of all, it's not a novel at all; it's a memoir in graphic form. It begins when the author was a young boy and encountered large dogs that frightened him. That same fear resurfaced later when he encountered an angry policeman who berated him when he was playing with a water pistol in a public park. Throughout his life, his lighter-skinned brother repeatedly told him that any discrimination or animosity he felt from others was because they were poor, not because they were black. His Black father avoided the issue altogether, and ignored Darrin when he asked about racism. Only his white mother told him the truth directly: white people will not see him in the same way they see a white child; they'll too often perceive him as older, bigger, more threatening. And because he heard this only from his mother, he generally didn't believe her, until many years of microaggressions and outright bigotry showed him just how right she was.

I was not aware that Darrin Bell was the first Black cartoonist to win a Pulitzer Prize, but this powerful memoir certainly demonstrates the impact of his work. I love this comment from his acknowledgements at the end of the book: "As the Prophets would say, 'It is not linear.' I exist in the past where I lived this. I exist in the present where I chronicled it. And I exist in the future, Because one day, when my children and my future grandchildren are grown and have to have The Talk with their own sons and daughters, they can hand them this book. And there I'll be. I hope it helps them know that they're never alone."

Darrin Bell is a Pulitzer Prize winning editorial cartoonist, who beautifully brings the story of his life into his new graphic novel. Bell shows the reader how his personal relationships, historical events and racism has shaped his views on himself and the world. I interpreted this book a sa gift to his kids and other kids, to explain to them the "why" behind "the talk" when the words are harder to find. I found this book to have gorgeous art, gripping stories and meaningful lessons.

(Full disclosure: I received a free e-ARC for review through Netgalley. Content warning for racism.)

Born in Los Angeles in 1975, Darrin Bell is the first Black editorial cartoonist to win the Pulitzer Prize, as well as the first Black comic strip creator to have two strips syndicated nationally (Candorville and Rudy Park). He started drawing at a young age - three, at his grandfather's kitchen table - and, while still a student at UC Berkeley, launched a career as a freelance editorial cartoonist. His parents - a Black man and a white Jewish woman - divorced when Derrin was in elementary school, and he was primarily raised by his mother.

Bookended by "the talk" his Black father failed to have with him at the age of six, and the talk Bell and his wife Makeda had with their oldest son Zazu after the murder of George Floyd, THE TALK is a memoir that examines Bell's experiences as a biracial kid growing up in California in the '80s and '90s. The Challenger explosion, the beating of Rodney King, the 2000 (and 2008 and 2016) elections, 9/11, the kidnapping of Elian Gonzalez, the murder of Trayvon Martin, and, finally, culminating with COVID-19 and lockdown (and how the two helped to catapult the George Floyd protests into the "Aether") - Bell touches upon a number of culturally significant moments. (For this Gen X-er, it was like jumping into a time machine.)

We also get a glimpse of what it was like for him to experience these moments as a Black man - and, more specifically, a Black man whose job it was to provide cultural commentary by way of political cartoons. When a cartoon drawn hastily in the days following 9/11 is met with pained criticism by Sikh and Muslim readers, Bell decides to stop drawing political cartoons altogether - only to come out of retirement some ten years later, after the murder of Trayvon Martin and the resulting trial of George Zimmerman coincides with the birth of his first child, a son named Zazu. ("I know that if someone like Zimmerman were to one day murder my baby boy, half the country would say my son had it coming.")

Bell also interrogates the "smaller," more "mundane" microaggressions he endures, particularly as a Black man existing in majority-white spaces. Some of the most satisfying panels are when he calls out his vice principal (who takes credit for "scaring" Bell "straight," after a year spent harassing him) and college professor (a liberal white lady who accuses him of plagiarism without a shred of evidence).

THE TALK is a powerful and compelling graphic memoir, brimming with memorable panels and
penetrating observations. My favorite might be Bell's discussion of electromagnetic waves and the unprovable Aether, and how the latter is an apt metaphor for white supremacy.

When I first started reading this graphic memoir, I swiped to the dedication page and I knew that Darrin Bell's story will devastate me. The page is a never-ending list of black people that were murdered by police and (to a larger extent) white supremacy. The words "For my sons and daughters" are highlighted in the middle of that list, making the page into a powerful statement in itself.

I loved how vulnerable the author is with his fears during childhood and the years after. I can relate to the parts where his views on racism changes as he grows up. When he's a child, he thinks that his white mother is being paranoid whenever she brings up the fact that he's (half) black and that white society will always see him as a threat, no matter his age.

During a group discussion with his white classmates in his undergrad years, there's a really sad and sobering moment where he slowly realizes that his mother was right. No matter how "good" of a person he is, America will always see him as a black man. There's no way to escape white supremacy since it's so embedded in American society. It's so powerful that I had to screenshot it. As a WOC, it rings true for me.

"I think I was taken off guard by their asking me questions. Usually these guys reflexively tell me I'm wrong. Or they outright ignore my points (until one of them repeats what I said, as if THEY thought of it.) My hypothesis is that wittingly or not, they see minorities as electromagnetic waves. And they see themselves as the medium through which our experiences, our perspectives, our opinions - and even our PRESENCE - propagate. Everything about us is valid only to the extent that THEY are willing to entertain it.

They seem to feel that they're as foundational and as supreme as the Aether."

There's a chapter titled "The Talk" where the author has "the talk" with his black son about the realities of being black in America. It was really powerful to see it all laid out and ngl, it made me cry. Maybe (hopefully?) his son will grow up to live in a better world. If White America gets its act together.

Thank you to Henry Holt & Company and NetGalley for this arc.

This book. This book. I intended to just download it. I intended to just glance at it. I intended to just read a little, and go back to work. I found I could not stop reading it. I gobbled it up, if not in one sitting, becasue I eventually had to go back to working, at least in one day. Every break, I returned to it, until I had read the entire thing, and wow.


Darrin Bell draws editorial cartoons as well as Candorville. By calling this book “The Talk” he refers to the talk that all Black parents have to give their children about how the world looks at them. How they can’t have realistic toy guns. How they can’t assume police are going to be reasonable. He explains it like meeting a rabid dog. You just have to surrender, and hope for the best.
This memoir goes from the time he is about six, until today, in this world, where Black people are being murdered by police officers. Where he finds that he has to explain why to his own six year old son, hoping that he can explain better than his dad ever did. His dad, who just wanted to ignore the whole thing.


Bell explains that sometimes when he wants to explain something that can’t be explained in an editorial cartoon, he turns to his comic strip.


Very moving. Very raw. Very sad. This covers the Rodney King beating, up to the George Floyd murder. Sad bookends. But bright moments as well.

<em>Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review.</em>

The Talk by Darrin Bell is a graphic novel about the conversation every parent of a Black child has to have around how their race impacts how others will treat them. In this narrative, Darrin uses the metaphor of how a person communicates with a dog in order to show they are not a threat. This example is weaved throughout the novel as a way to understand how terrifying it is when, as a person in a Black body, you feel that you are in harm's way and can experience violence at any unpredictable turn.

We read the protagonist's coming of age journey, the way his mother fiercely advocated for him and the way his father failed to teach him certain lessons about being a Black man. At the end of the narrative, the protagonist has his own son and is able to teach him the lessons he had to learn on his own through trial and error.

I really enjoyed this graphic novel. It condenses hard to process information in relatable terms that young people will understand while also providing intersecting narratives on what it means to grow up, develop friendships, fall in love, cultivate your professional skills and career, and make meaning out of life's experiences - even the most painful ones.

Thank you to the author and publisher for the e-arc copy!