The Talk

Graphic novel memoir 

     There are a lot of talks any parent has to have with their children.  Darrin Bell's The Talk is structured around the one white parents are spared: the one on survival strategies in a still too racist world.  A world where being stopped by the police can result in an on the spot death penalty and white people feel entitled to call the police for the most trivial reasons.  A world in which for too many people Black lives don't matter.

     When Bell (who is biracial) asked his white mother for a water gun she bought him a bright green one.  When he asked why she didn't get him a more realistic one she gave him an answer that he considered "the most paranoid nonsense I've ever heard."  When he took it outside to play it was confiscated by a cop.  Then a flashback conveys his mother's speech the essence of which is "The world is different for you and your brother.  White people won't see you or treat you the way they do little white boys."

     Bell is a father in 2020.  His very young son asks him "Who's George Floyd?"  He remembers how his father had avoided discussions about racial matters.

     "I see the man my boy will become.  I wanted to create a world for him where he'd never have to carry a four-hundred-year-old burden.  Maybe Dad sought to spare me from it.  My father didn't have that power, and neither do I.  My son's world is his to create.  All I can do is prepare him."

     In between the anchoring incidents readers discover Bell's life story replete with incidents of racism and his growing discovery of his power to fight back by sharing his insights through words and images.  It is that blend which he carries over into The Talk that makes it so much more powerful than a words only format ever could be.

On a purrrsonal note, Tuesday was a volunteering day.  I shelf read 📚 in the Orono Public Library's juvenile wing.  Then I walked down the hill and did mostly weeding in the community garden.  The weather was perfect: sunny and breezy.  There was a great jazz concert going on in the Library's outdoor amphitheater.  The blueberry bushes in the library's garden were thick with delicious fruit.  My friend Zoe brought in shortbread sandwich cookies with jam filling she made herself.  It was a perfect evening.  (Jules)

It was not as muggy.  (Tobago)

A great big shout out goes out to Zoe because those cookies were amazing.

Tobago and Jules Hathaway 

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