Call me a literary snob, but I’ve never really gravitated toward graphic novels.
I mean, sure, my boys can’t get enough of them: from Dog Man to Captain Underpants, I Survived to The Magic Treehouse, they’ll read an entire book in one setting.
Graphic novels help them read.
So, I think I had it my head that graphic novels are well and good for burgeoning readers, for the 8 - 12 reading population my children fall into, but not, mind you, for me.
But I was wrong.
And the graphic novel that changed my mind about graphic novels? Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations by Mira Jacob.
A number of years ago, after The Color of Life released, my favorite neighborhood bookseller recommended it to me. Heeding Kathleen’s advice, I bought the book …where it proceeded to sit for another four years until I finally dusted it off and got to reading.
And friends, it’s exquisite.
Take this paragraph, which Jacobs, an Indian American woman, writes to her bi-racial son:
Here is the thing, though, the real, true thing I still have trouble admitting: I can’t protect you from everything. I can’t protect you from becoming a brown man in America. I can’t protect you from spending a lifetime caught between the beautiful dream of a diverse nation and the complicated reality of one. I can’t even protect you from the simple fact that sometimes, the people who love us will choose a world that doesn’t.
It was a gut-punch to my mama heart and certainly to the story I live as mother to two mixed-race boys. Because even though it’s a graphic novel, it’s a memoir about the conversations that happened on and around raising a young, bi-racial son in America today.
I can’t recommend it more highly.
P.S. Obviously I need to get on board with grown-up graphic novels. What of this genre have you read, loved, and recommend I give a go?