Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Darrin Bell’s new graphic memoir The Talk is an absorbing, creative examination of his life, richly illustrated with his drawings and told with great honesty, emotional candor, and humor. Bell is the biracial child of a Black father (who is strangely passive in the face of White racist acts) and a fiercely protective White mother. Indeed, in contrast to his father, his mother is a relentless anti-racist force, challenging cops, teachers, shopkeepers, or anyone she suspects of racist acts or bigoted presumptions directed at her Black children. It is his mom who gives Bell “The Talk”–the careful warning Black parents give their children about the racist society they will encounter outside the home. The book uses Bell’s development as a cartoonist to map his path from childhood through his teenage years, college, and growth into a professional artist, marking the struggles of a biracial kid surrounded by racist white assumptions on one side, and Black teen bullying and disrespect on the other. In this nine page excerpt, Bell carefully (and comically) navigates race and the cultural gap between himself and some of his Black classmates in the hallways of his high school. The Talk by Darrin Bell is out now from Henry Holt.
