The Talk

Darrin Bell's mother forbade him from owning a realistic water gun when he was six. Her reason was fear: she worried that police would see a small Black boy as older and less innocent than he was. In this illustrated memoir, Bell traces how that conversation, and the many others that followed, shaped his life at home and in public, from childhood through adulthood. He grows up in Los Angeles and discovers his voice as a cartoonist, while learning that teachers, neighbors, and officers often regard him as a threat and, in doing so, make him conscious of his own vulnerability.

Bell's account also looks at the killings of Black Americans that have shaped public life, and it pauses on the period when crowds filled the streets to protest the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. Throughout, the book mixes candid reflection with cartoons that offer sharp observations on race and policing. The story closes in the present, with Bell weighing whether he is prepared to sit down with his own young son and have the same conversation his mother had with him.