Mira Jacob is the author and illustrator of Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations. Her critically acclaimed novel, The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing, was a Barnes & Noble Discover New Writers pick, shortlisted for India’s Tata First Literature Award, and long-listed for the Brooklyn Literary Eagles Prize. It was named one of the best books of 2014 by Kirkus Reviews, the Boston Globe, Goodreads, Bustle, and The Millions. Her writing and drawings have appeared in the New York Times, Electric Literature, Tin House, Lit Hub, Guernica, Vogue, the Telegraph, and BuzzFeed, and she has a drawn column on Shondaland. She currently teaches at The New School.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
12TH STREET: What inspired Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations?
MIRA JACOB: My son was super obsessed with Michael Jackson—he was about six when the obsession started—and he had a lot of questions about his color. My husband is white and I’m brown, and oddly enough, Michael Jackson ends up being both of those things in his lifetime. Skin color-wise. So, my son was left alone in a room with a bunch of Michael Jackson albums—which we bought because we thought we were being super smart—and he saw the album [covers] and he just had a lot of questions. What color am I? What color are you? What color is daddy? None of which I answered particularly well.
But then the questions got much more pointed. [In part] I think because Ferguson was going on and the things that were sort of under wraps until Trump fully ascended were out there in the ether, [so much] so that even a six year old kid could pick up on them. And the questions he was asking me were so painful and weird and funny.
[So] I started drawing [our family]. I drew us on printer paper, cut us out, ran into his room, got the Michael Jackson albums, and put them on my dining room table. Then, I placed the drawing cutouts of us on top of the albums, drew our conversation on printer paper, cut it out in cartoon bubbles, and put those on top of the albums.
STREET: Good Talk is a graphic memoir. How did the choice to tell this story graphically come about?
JACOB: First, I tried to write an essay, [but] it didn’t work. Mainly because writing an essay—especially about race—is just a horrible fucking proposition right now. [Because most] people read it [just] so they can tell you that you’re wrong, and nothing that you feel is legitimate. Certainly at that point in time, I feel like there was a lot more resistance to that narrative, especially from white Americans who were, like, “No, that stuff’s all in the past. You’re being over-sensitive.” [So] I started drawing us because it was the easiest way to get to the conversation without trying to explain it to an audience that I kept feeling wouldn’t believe me anyway. And I knew the conversation was really important to this other audience who probably was living it like I was.
STREET: What do you think illustrating the face-to-face interactions adds to the experience of reading and understanding Good Talk?
JACOB: It’s interesting because I added the faces, but the faces [in the book] never change expression. You know that it’s people talking because you see our faces. But then as [the conversations] get harder, our faces never change. Nobody’s face ever changes. And I think it creates a weird dissonance where you both understand that the conversation is painful, but the face isn’t holding the pain. Which means that if I’m not holding the pain, and if you the reader are not waiting for the character to cry, then you have to hold onto the emotion longer than you probably even want to. And for me, I think that was the most important part of it. That I wasn’t the one having to hold onto the emotion anymore. It wasn’t performing the racial pain for an America that is largely numb or blind or dismissive of it.
STREET: Why do you think it’s important to share and engage in conversations like this with the world right now?
JACOB: In 2015, 2014, and even kind of in the glow of post-Obama getting elected, I thought—on some level—everyone knew what my friends of color were going through. We knew it was rough. We knew the things that we were facing. And, frankly, I thought my white liberal friends knew, [too.] But over the years, what I found out was how few did, and how what I had put in the place of not talking was a kind of fantasy of how we all really felt about each other. And what I realized when that fantasy kind of busted in the spectacular fashion that it did was that I wasn’t willing to let people hold onto that fantasy anymore. I wasn’t willing to let myself hold onto it, and I definitely wasn’t willing to let the people that kept saying things like, “But this isn’t our country” hold onto it either. I wanted to say, “No, this is our country. It’s been like this. And it’s been like this for a while.”
And obviously, I come at it from a very specific [perspective] because I think many of my black friends have known it in much deeper and more thorough ways than I have. I felt like it was important to own the specificity of my position being a brown person who, in some ways, maybe had access to a certain level of white privilege, but didn’t have access in other ways, and so could really see the gap and the disappointment, but could understand why the delusion was a persuasive one, [too].
STREET: How has writing Good Talk changed the kind of conversations you’re having—or the depth of conversations that you’re having—with the people in your life? Are the conversations getting easier or are they becoming more difficult?
JACOB: I feel like when people come to my readings, they really want to know, “Is it better now between you [and your family]?” Because they’re trying to read the tea leaves of their own family. And it’s not. It’s not worse. Psychologically, it’s better for me by a lot because I know that I’m no longer muzzling myself to stay in a relationship with them. But I’m aware that by not staying quiet about it, I put out into the world something that was painful for the white members of my family. I’m aware that they are now aware of discomfort. For me, that’s a pretty important step, actually, because for so long it’s just been on me to keep everything comfortable for everybody. I think a lot of people of color in that position [feel like,] “Just don’t make anyone feel uncomfortable with what your life really looks like.” And I think there’s a guilt about being like, “I’m letting you know it’s not okay.” [But] I’m letting you know that there’s no answer in sight, [either]. I certainly don’t have one. What people often expect from the person of color is if you’re going to bring up your discomfort, you’re also going to tell me what we’re going to need to do to fix it. And I don’t have that. Nor do I think it’s actually my job to come up with that. So it’s been just as complicated as it ever was. The hardest part is probably just the emotional exhaustion.
STREET: How do you take care of yourself in those situations?
JACOB: I think that so many people who have been asked to explain themselves and their positions hit a point of burnout, and then you’re expected to just move past that. And I think it’s okay to just listen to your burnout sometimes and say, “Yeah, I’m done right now.” Like I have three different friends that I’m done with right now, and I’m hoping that at some point in the future I won’t be. Because I love them individually on many levels. But I also think that they’ve put enormous blinders on in this moment, and have stayed very wedded to them, and I’m not going to get them to take them off. But I don’t have to stay in a conversation with that person. That’s just not my job. They can stay there with themselves and they have every right to grow at the rate that they want to grow. But I don’t have to stop myself to maintain the relationship.
STREET: What would you say to people who want to be allies and help facilitate these conversations? Who want to be a part of continuing the dialogue, but maybe feel scared or self-conscious or just generally wary about engaging in conversations like this about race and racial injustice?
JACOB: I get the fear. That’s real and it’s hard not to be scared in a conversation, especially when you might say the wrong thing. But I would say, you’re going to say the wrong thing. It’s going to happen. If you’re engaging in these conversations, it’s going to happen. Eventually, you will say the wrong thing. You’ve come from a position of mostly power in this country, and the biggest thing you have to fear is the shame of doing something wrong in a conversation? You’ve got it really fucking easy. It’s hard, for sure, but you’ve got it really fucking easy. So know that. And know that you won’t die from facing the embarrassing moment. You won’t. Like, you can recover. You can let yourself recover. You can let the situation recover. You can find a way to forgive yourself and forgive the moment and keep going. What you can’t do is say, “I’m going to engage with this, but if I get my feelings hurt, I don’t have to try anymore.”
STREET: What do you hope your book Good Talk inspires in its readers? What kind of conversations or action do you hope the book sparks? Because it really does feel like a call to action in a lot of ways.
JACOB: Tell me about that. It feels like a call to action?
STREET: Yes, for me. From my experience.
JACOB: Tell me. What is inspiring you? I’m curious.
STREET: Well, I’m a white woman and for me, it inspired a lot of questions like, “How can I be a better ally? What makes a good ally? How can I engage in these conversations in a way that is helpful, productive, and also make sure I don’t center myself and my whiteness?”
JACOB: Yes! That’s a great takeaway. God, I hope that just keeps happening!