Elle India – July 2019

ELLE.IN 78 JULY

BOOK CLUB

Dear Mira,

Your book is extraordinary.

I alternated between laughing

and having a lump in my

throat as I read it. I feel

heartbroken and hopeful. I

feel like we have lived

parallel lives, and you have

given voice to so many

experiences and feelings

that I’ve had over the years,

many of which I’ve buried so

deep that I couldn’t believe

they were on the page in

front of me. I thought you had

eavesdropped into my life and

experiences and I couldn’t

figure out how you knew what

I had been through.

Thank you for writing

this book. I consider it required

reading for everyone in my

life, especially if they want

to understand the unique

experience of growing up

brown in America.

O

ver the last few years, I’ve

been thinking a lot about

unanswerable questions.

What happens when

we die? How do we find

happiness? (You know, the small

stuff). So much so that I even wrote

a book about my search for answers,

called Stalking God: My Unorthodox

Search For Something To Believe

In (Seal Press), and did a TED

talk about it. And I talk to pretty

much everyone about these kinds

of questions, pretty much every

chance I get.

So when I was asked to sit down

with author Mira Jacob and chat

about her attempts to answer the

many questions her son asks her in

her latest book, a graphic memoir

titled Good Talk (Bloomsbury India),

I was expecting to meet a kindred

spirit. On a surface level, it is like

we had lived parallel lives: first-

generation South Asian American

women, daughters of immigrants

from India who were raised in

predominantly white American

suburbs in the ’70s and ’80s,

writers currently living in New

York City, happily married for the

better part of 20 years to childhood

acquaintances, and one pre-tween

aged child with a name starting with

the letter Z. So I expected us to hit

it off, and for her book to resonate

with me, but our connection quickly

went so much deeper than that.

In reading Jacob’s book, you

would forgive me for thinking

she had been a fly on the wall

to conversations (and my inner

dialogue) throughout my entire life.

And I found myself sending the

following email to her as I turned

the last page and wiped away tears:

As she navigates

questions on race

and belonging from

her Jewish-Indian son,

Mira Jacob talks to

Anjali Kumar about

her graphic memoir

Good Talk, a piercing

observation into what it

means to be brown in

a polarised America

THE GOOD

FIGHT

Photograph: In Kim (Mira Jacob)