The Talk, Darrin Bell
The Talk, Darrin Bell
List: $15.99 | Sale: $11.20
Club: $7.99

The Talk

Author: Darrin Bell

Narrator: Brittany Bradford, Darrin Bell, Emyree Zazu Bell, William DeMeritt

Unabridged: 3 hr 20 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 08/27/2024

Synopsis

"The audiobook version of The Talk,...isn’t a graphic novel stripped of its pictures; it’s a radio play that delivers its own powerful aural experience. The production employs music, subtle sound effects and a cast that includes Bell and his little boy. The charming humor and incisive wisdom that elevates the print version of 'The Talk' are amply conveyed by these narrators in an audiobook that’s clearly been designed from the bottom up to exploit the format’s unique advantages. For some listeners, this will be a deeply personal experience; for others, an illuminating lesson in empathy. But no matter who you are, you’re ready to have “The Talk."—The Washington Post

“In its audio translation, the highlight is Darrin Bell’s storytelling ability, enriched by a soundscape that includes music, sound effects, and archival audio...a powerhouse audio that should be widely recommended.”—Booklist (Starred Review)

This program features multicast narration.

Winner of the NAACP Image Award in Outstanding Graphic Novels
Winner of the Libby Award for Best Comic/Graphic Novel of the Year
Nominated for an Eisner Award for Best Graphic Memoir
Named The Year's Best Graphic Novel by Publishers Weekly
Named one of Publishers Weekly's Top Ten Best Books of 2023
Named one of NPR's Books We Love
Named one of Kirkus' Best 2023 Books
Named one of the Washington Post's 10 best graphic novels of 2023
One of TIME Magazine's Must-Read Books of the Year
Shortlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction 2024
Booklist Editors' Choice: Graphic Novels, 2023
New York Public Library's Best New Comics of 2023 Top Ten Pick
Chicago Public Library's Best Books of 2023 Top Ten Pick
Named one of School Library Journal's Best Graphic Novels of 2023
Named one of The Guardian's Best Graphic Novels of 2023

Darrin Bell was six years old when his mother told him he couldn’t have a realistic water gun. She said she feared for his safety, that police tend to think of little Black boys as older and less innocent than they really are.

In this immersive audiobook adaptation—with wall-to-wall sound design, an expansive music soundtrack, and full-cast narration including the author and his son—Bell uses his sharp humor to examine how The Talk shaped intimate and public moments from childhood to adulthood. While coming of age in Los Angeles—and finding a voice through cartooning—Bell becomes painfully aware of being regarded as dangerous by white teachers, neighbors, and police officers and thus of his mortality. Drawing attention to the brutal murders of African Americans and showcasing revealing insights and cartoons along the way, he brings us up to the moment of reckoning when people took to the streets protesting the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. And now Bell must decide whether he and his own six-year-old son are ready to have The Talk.

"In The Talk, Bell combines the overtly personal and the sociopolitical in a textured autobiography that blends raw honestly, moving memories and powerful insights on race and police relations.” —The Washington Post

A Macmillan Audio production from Henry Holt & Company.

About Darrin Bell

Darrin Bell, recipient of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning, the 2016 Berryman Award for Editorial Cartooning, the 2015 RFK Award for Editorial Cartooning, and UC Berkeley’s 2015 Daily Californian Alumni of the Year Award, began his career in 1995 at the age of twenty. While serving as the Daily Californian’s staff cartoonist, he began freelancing for the Opinion pages of the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and Oakland Tribune. In 1997, he cocreated the comic strip Rudy Park and self-syndicated it to technology magazines. United Media launched it into newspapers in 2001. In 2003, Darrin launched his other comic strip, Candorville, in newspapers via the Washington Post Writers Group (WPWG), which also began syndicating his editorial cartoons in 2013. While WPWG still syndicates Candorville and Rudy Park, Darrin moved his editorial cartoons to King Features Syndicate in late 2018. He’s also a contributing cartoonist for the New Yorker. Darrin lives with his wife and four children in California.

About Brittany Bradford

Brittany Bradford graduated from Juilliard in 2018, and since that time has had a career traversing stage, tv, film, and most recently, audiobooks. A Southern California crunchy granola nature girl now living in Brooklyn, Brittany has brought audiobook narration to Darrin Bell’s The Talk, Rita Omokha’s Resist, and is in the recording process for her first solo narration on an upcoming novel. Her skillset with dense heightened text, mixed with a deep love of films, has made her a narrator able to convey imagery on a grand scale, but told in an intimate way. Broadway: Bernhardt/Hamlet. Select Off-Broadway: The Comeuppance (Obie Award, Signature Theater), Wedding Band (Obie Award, TFANA), TV: Julia (HBO Max), The Watcher (Netflix), Gilded Age (HBO Max), Dead Ringers (Amazon), Fire Country(CBS), Fear the Walking Dead (AMC) Film: The Same Storm (dir. Peter Hedges). Classix member and HomeBase Theater Collective co-founder.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Thomas on September 03, 2023

Powerful graphic memoir about a Black man recounting his childhood and coming of age as he decides whether to give The Talk to his own son. I liked the honesty in which Darrin Bell portrayed his racialized experiences growing up and the range of emotions they instilled within him. I found certain mo......more

Goodreads review by Rod on June 23, 2023

Centered around "The Talk" his mother had with him as a child and "The Talk" that looms before him with his own son, cartoonist Darrin Bell reflects on a life buffeted by blatant racism and constant microaggressions even as several white people assure him he is "one of the good ones." Another sad and......more

Goodreads review by Basic B's Guide on June 06, 2023

I sat down and read this cover to cover. Read it. Share it. Talk about it. Never forget.......more

Goodreads review by Stewart on March 20, 2024

Wow. This was much better than I expected. Honestly, I'm not sure what I expected. I'd heard that this was good, but there's good and then there's GOOD if that makes any sense. The book opens in 1981, with young Darrin asking his mother for a water pistol after seeing some children playing with one. S......more

Goodreads review by Kelsey on July 01, 2023

Every once in a while I feel like I'm pretty aware, and then a book like this crosses my path and I get the reminder of how privileged I am, and how I will never understand the path others must endure. My heart breaks for bipoc humans suffering under the crushing weight of racism. My heart breaks fo......more

Quotes

Winner of the Black Caucus of the American Library Association Outstanding Contribution to Publishing Citation Award
ALA Alex Award Winner (2024)
Finalist for the National Cartoonists Society’s Graphic Novel Award
New York Times, “14 Nonfiction Books to Read This Summer“
Los Angeles Times, “10 June books for your reading list“
The Root, “A Supersized List of June 2023 Books By Black Authors We Can't Wait to Read“
St. Louis Post Dispatch, “40 New Titles to Make Summer Vacation More Fun“
In Between Drafts, “Best New Books of June“
The Messenger, “Here Are the Best Books to Read This June“
Shelf Awareness, “10 Best Nonfiction Adult Titles“
Publishers Lunch, “The Best of the Best Books of 2023“
Minneapolis Star Tribune, “40 Great Books to Get You or Someone on Your Gift List Through the Winter“

“A moving portrait . . . funny and touching, intellectually and emotionally stimulating. There’s pride and prejudice, family drama, and a love story. I loved this book. You will too.”
―Victor LaValle, author of The Changeling

“A Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist draws on his childhood in Los Angeles to explore racism on a deeply personal level. There’s a poignancy, too, in the cyclical nature of the story: Bell, now a father, is wrestling with the same questions his own parents face.“
—New York Times

“Propulsive reading, drawn with urgency and verve. Once you pick up The Talk, you won’t be able to put it down.”
—Alison Bechdel, author of Fun Home and The Secret to Superhuman Strength

"In The Talk, Bell combines the overtly personal and the sociopolitical in a textured autobiography that blends raw honestly, moving memories and powerful insights on race and police relations.”
—Washington Post

"The book is visually stunning, and propulsive, with an absorbing narrative voice. Divided into almost two dozen chapters, its drawings fluctuate from the whimsically cartoonish to the delightfully painterly. . . . Reminiscent of longform comics memoirs such as Alison Bechdel's Fun Home and Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, stories about young writers and artists finding their ways through both personal and structural hardships and strife, this epic portrait of an artist is a masterpiece. Like the effects of an unduly perceptive editorial cartoon, The Talk makes a penetrative, and lasting, impression.”
—NPR

“Powerful”
—The New Yorker

“A thought-provoking memoir beautifully rendered in expressive artwork for a powerful piece that’s easy to devour but harder to digest. . . . Bell’s mastery of the medium shines throughout The Talk with stunning artwork that heightens the story to 11”
—Associated Press

“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.“
—The Fanatic

“Darrin Bell’s first foray into graphic novels is a triumph. A cinematically comic, coming-of-age blend of race, culture, and gratuitous nerdity. Wonderful.”
—Keith Knight, creator of The K Chronicles and Woke

“It’s nearly impossible to appreciate another person’s truth, but if a brilliant storyteller offers to light the way, take him up on it. Bell is the Ta-Nehisi Coates of comics, an indispensable explainer of how it feels to grow up in a world that repeatedly treats you as other. The talk with my white sons boiled down to 'Be kind.' It’s hard to overstate the distance between that admonition and 'Stay alive.'”
—Garry Trudeau, creator of Doonesbury

“A deeply personal, brutally honest, and achingly funny graphic novel that captures the fear, trauma, and complexity of growing up as a biracial man in the USA. The Talk is a strikingly illustrated vision.”
—Lalo Alcaraz, award-winning visual media artist and creator of the syndicated daily comic strip La Cucaracha

“This emotionally striking work is sure to leave a lasting mark.“
—Publishers Weekly, starred review

“A beautifully drawn book, rich with insight, humor, and hard-won knowledge.“
—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“Bell has honed his skills of cultural observation over many years as a social commentator in comic strips and editorial cartoons. He’s refined his skills up to the breaking point and back. This graphic novel is a testament to his efforts.”
—Comics Grinder

“Bell’s striking debut graphic memoir, utilizes wit and emotional openness to chronicle the ways in which racism has shaped his life, from a police officer terrorizing a young Bell over his green water gun to protests in 2020 over the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.”
—BookPage, starred review

Awards

  • ALA Alex Awards Winner (Adult for Young Adults)
  • CPL: Chicago Public Library Best of the Best
  • School Library Journal Best Books of the Year
  • Washington Post Best Books of the Year
  • Time Magazine Best Books of the Year
  • New Yorker Best Books of the Year
  • Library Journal Best Books of the Year
  • Carnegie Medal
  • The Guardian (UK) Best Books of the Year
  • Kirkus Reviews Best Books of the Year
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