Reviews

The Talk by Darrin Bell

bridget1989's review against another edition

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challenging medium-paced

3.5

cida's review against another edition

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Powerful and moving. Absolutely beautiful and profound writing. The artstyle isnt my favorite but that is personal taste and the storytelling was so effective. Made me cry.

534534564587654323456789's review against another edition

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Great lettering.
There’s always a common lack of intersectionality in these coming of age memoirs. I guess one single marginalised identity is within the acceptable and appropriate proximity to normie, just the right amount of “otherness” to be educated on.
I don’t quite appreciate the way black gendered women were shown here?

juniper_reads_things's review against another edition

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informative sad tense fast-paced

5.0

The Talk
Dedication: for my sons and daughters 
First sentence: S-S-Steven?
Favorite sentences: Professor… I don’t feel ashamed for playing the card you dealt me. 
Things were only as “different” as the Aether allowed them to be. 
I’ve collected things to give to my son. But he doesn’t need things. He needs a better world, and I don’t know how to give him that. 

brenaudcreative's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful informative medium-paced

4.0


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daniellekat's review against another edition

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challenging emotional informative reflective sad tense medium-paced

4.5

An incredibly powerful and well thought out graphic memoir. I liked the way Bell intermixed personal and public moments that shaped him in big and small ways. I wish there was more about Bell as a parent but overall I thought this was well paced. My major drawback was that I really didn't like the artwork. I thought there was too much text, and coupled with the messy, sketch-like art, I found it hard to focus on.

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amandaschultz's review against another edition

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challenging reflective medium-paced

5.0

mlgilp's review against another edition

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challenging emotional informative medium-paced

4.5

bookph1le's review against another edition

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5.0

This is exactly the kind of book white people need to read, and, sadly, the kind of book most won't. If you're white like me and read this and don't feel as if you've been punched in the gut, I don't understand you. It's beyond my comprehension how one human being can read a book like this, witness the way another human being has been treated, and not feel on a gut-deep level the injustice that other human being suffered. What's worse is that what Bell is chronicling isn't just an injustice committed against a single person--as bad as that would be--but the systemic injustices that happen over and over and over again because America refuses to reckon with racism, as well as refusing to acknowledge how racism is embedded in this country's every institution.

I'm sickened when I see what's happening today, how marginalized people in this country are being attacked. If it's not book bans, then it's draconian laws designed to rob people of their bodily autonomy, or it's the stripping away of voting rights, or the war against any attempt to try to encourage more diversity in educational and business settings. I'm tired of watching history repeat itself.

So I'll keep reading books like this one. I'll keep reckoning with the ways I've upheld systems of oppression--both on purpose and inadvertently. I'll try to make myself a better human being because decades from now, when my children are the age I am now, I hope the world they live in bears so little resemblance to the one I live in that they find it hard to believe my world ever existed.

ltoddlibrarian8's review against another edition

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emotional reflective fast-paced

5.0