The Talk
  • Published: 19 September 2023
  • ISBN: 9781787334526
  • Imprint: Jonathan Cape
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $55.00

The Talk

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novelist

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Darrin Bell was six years old when his mother told him he couldn't have a realistic water gun. She said she that police think little Black boys older and less innocent than they are. So began The Talk.

***LONGLISTED FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL***
***A GUARDIAN GRAPHIC NOVEL OF THE YEAR 2023***

Darrin Bell was six years old when his mother told him he couldn't have a realistic water gun. She said that police think little Black boys older and less innocent than they are. So began 'The Talk'...

'The Ta-Nehisi Coates of comics'
GARRY TRUDEAU, creator of Doonesbury

'Darrin Bell has produced another American classic'
GUARDIAN

Through evocative illustrations and sharp humour, Darrin Bell examines how The Talk all Black parents must have with their children shaped his intimate and public moments from childhood to adulthood. While coming of age in Los Angeles - and finding a voice through cartooning - Bell becomes painfully aware of being regarded as dangerous by white teachers, neighbours and police officers, and thus of his mortality. Drawing attention to the brutal murders of African Americans, and showcasing revealing insights and cartoons along the way, he brings us up to the moment of reckoning when people took to the streets protesting the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.

And now Bell must decide whether he and his own six-year-old son are ready to have The Talk.
  • Published: 19 September 2023
  • ISBN: 9781787334526
  • Imprint: Jonathan Cape
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $55.00
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About the author

Darrin Bell

Darrin Bell, a recipient of the Berryman Award and the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for Editorial Cartooning, began his career at the age of twenty. In 2019 he won the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning, becoming the first African American to do so. Rudy Park (co-created with Matt Richtel) and Bell's Candorville, both syndicated comic strips, have run for more than twenty years. A contributing cartoonist for the New Yorker, he lives with his wife and four children in California.

Praise for The Talk

A deeply personal, brutally honest, and achingly funny graphic novel... The Talk is a strikingly illustrated vision

Lalo Alcaraz, creator of La Cucaracha

Darrin Bell's first foray into graphic novels is a triumph. A cinematically comic, coming-of-age blend of race, culture, and gratuitous nerdity. Wonderful

Keith Knight, creator of The K Chronicles and Woke

Propulsive reading, drawn with urgency and verve. Once you pick up The Talk, you won't be able to put it down

Alison Bechdel, author of Fun Home

A moving portrait... funny and touching, intellectually and emotionally stimulating. There's pride and prejudice, family drama, and a love story. I loved this book. You will too

Victor LaValle, author of The Changeling

It's nearly impossible to appreciate another person's truth, but if a brilliant storyteller offers to light the way, take him up on it. Bell is the Ta-Nehisi Coates of comics, an indispensable explainer of how it feels to grow up in a world that repeatedly treats you as other. The talk with my white sons boiled down to 'Be kind.' It's hard to overstate the distance between that admonition and 'Stay alive'

Garry Trudeau, creator of Doonesbury

A Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist draws on his childhood in Los Angeles to explore racism on a deeply personal level. There’s a poignancy, too, in the cyclical nature of the story: Bell, now a father, is wrestling with the same questions his own parents face

New York Times

Visually stunning, and propulsive, with an absorbing narrative voice... Reminiscent of longform comics memoirs such as Alison Bechdel's Fun Home and Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis... This epic portrait of an artist is a masterpiece... The Talk makes a penetrative, and lasting, impression

NPR

Darrin Bell has produced another American classic... An expressive and direct work about racism’s impact, and the problems we have discussing it

Guardian, *Best Graphic Novels of the Year*
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