My guest today, Mirra Jacob, is the author and illustrator of a really moving, funny,

provocative, new graphic memoir called Good Talk and Memoir in Conversations, which

is the follow-up to her also critically acclaimed novel, The Sleepwalkers Guide to Dancing.

Mirra's writings and drawings have also appeared everywhere from the New York Times,

Narinaka, Vogue, so many others, she's even drawn a column on Shandaland.

And while living in Brooklyn now, Mirra grew up in New Mexico, the daughter of first-generation

immigrants from India, she learned to fly a single-engine Cessna with her physician-dad

as a young child, and also learned at a young age that the color of her skin had a very

real effect on the way that people saw and treated her, and also the assumptions that

people made about her.

This became ever more apparent when years later, as a writer living in New York City,

she witnessed the events of 9-11 up close, and found herself not just a New Yorker who

was grieving alongside everyone else, but also an instant subject of suspicion.

In her new memoir Good Talk, Mirra drops back into this conversation around race, color

of her skin, the assumptions that people make, years down the road, starting with a question

from her son, actually, who wanted to know if some white people hate brown people, and

daddy is white, does he hate me?

We dive into not only Mirra's powerful answer and her personal story, but also her upbringing,

the beautiful relationships with her parents, and also the importance of staying curious,

and in the conversation in today's culture, and how she weaves all of these issues into

this really moving new book.

Living when clear answers are nowhere to be found, and mess seems not only inevitable,

...