Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations

Jed sends his parents, who support Trump, a video of protesters “getting beaten up and escorted out of the rallies” (244). He wants to open their eyes to the man they support, but his dad gets irate with him and refuses to discuss the matter. Jed feels sick to his stomach thinking about his parents being so closed-minded. He tells Mira his parents do not believe Trump is racist and they think the video is “just the media making things up” (249). Jed is livid that Trump is stirring hatred towards specific races and religions, and he is in shock that his parents refuse to even listen to his concerns even though this prejudice will affect their lives directly.

Mira’s mother-in-law invites her to a “bark mitzvah” (250) for her dog Zuki. Mira recalls loving Jed’s family right away due to them being so warm, welcoming, and “mostly on the right side of nutty” (251). At the party, Mira’s mother-in-law invites all the people she knows from the dog park. Two men, husbands of wives she likes, assume that Mira is the help at the party. She is the only person of color there, and despite being seven months into her pregnancy they begin asking her to refill drinks and take their plates when she walks by. Rather than saying anything at first, Mira complies. She explains that “sometimes, everything you have ever learned can turn you into someone you don’t want to be” (257), and she finds herself refilling their drinks even though she really does not want to. Paula, Mira’s mother-in-law’s best friend, notices this and tells Mira’s mother-in-law after the party. When Mira is asked about it, her mother-in-law is in denial at first that her friends could do such a thing. However, when Mira is stern and tells her she knows exactly what happened, her mother-in-law feels overrun with guilt and affection for her daughter-in-law. Mira calls her mom, and her mother-in-law refers to Mira as her daughter. When Mira’s mother-in-law apologizes, the two lie on a patchwork quilt watching the ceiling fan as they wait for the baby to kick. 

In 2008, Mira and Jed watch with the world as Obama makes his way toward the presidency. They convince themselves he could never win to prevent potential disappointment, but both are hopeful that he will. Conversations start popping up about “America’s legacy of Black slavery, Native American genocide, and Japanese internment” (272), and on the other hand, people begin calling out Obama as a fraud or “not Black enough” (273). Obama gives a speech that Mira and Jed both witness on television, in which he calls out the racial tensions and hatred within America and the systemic oppression of people of color. He calls for a united America in which children of all colors are equally cared for and educated and a country that treats its fellow citizens with respect and kindness. Mira and Jed can hardly imagine Obama being elected, but after hearing this speech and seeing him call out this issue on national television, their hopes rise even higher.

Jed’s parents call less often since Jed sent them the video, and when they do call it is awkward and distant. One day, Mira takes it upon herself to be honest and tell her mother-in-law that Trump’s politics are causing things to get stressful and scaring Z. Jed’s mother brushes it off, saying Z does not need to worry himself with these things at age eight, and Mira argues that it cannot be prevented. Jed’s mother becomes defensive and tells Mira, “We’re entitled to vote the way we want to. You don’t agree with us, fine. But I don’t want to discuss it anymore” (279). Z walks into the room and asks to talk to Grandma, and the conversation between her and Mira ends there. Mira cannot seem to get through to her in-laws, and she feels betrayed as well as angry on behalf of Jed.

Mira goes to talk to her girlfriends about the way Z is feeling. She feels like she made a mistake by assuring him that good people would take care of them and prevent Trump from being elected. Mira’s friend has a similar experience to share: Her cousin says he cannot trust grownups anymore because none of them warned him about Trump “getting this far” (281). He is six years old, and it hits all three women at once that the children of America are being exposed to adult concerns and issues that they simply should not need to be. Mira confides that Jed’s parents refuse to discuss the issues at hand, and her friend suggests that “white people are sleepwalking when it comes to racism in America” (286), which leads them to deny its existence and turn their anger toward those making the claims instead of toward the racism. Everything is “turning into one big question in [Z’s] mind” (287), and Mira’s friend points out that this is something they will be dealing with for the rest of their lives.

In the weeks leading up to the election, Mira and Jed get in an argument about Trump and Jed’s parents. Jed is irate that Trump is winning, and he tells Mira so. Mira asks him to keep his voice down and lets Jed know Z has been asking all kinds of questions lately, including about Jed’s parents. Jed tries to tell Mira they still love her and tries to convince Mira that their “entire 15-year relationship” (292) is not moot because of one election. Mira cannot believe Jed does not understand, so she turns the tables to put him in that position and force clarity on him by asking him how he would feel if her parents voted for an anti-Semite. Jed admits he would feel terrible, and Mira states, “I feel awful. I feel like they’ve abandoned me” (293). After 15 years of spending holidays and vacations together, bonding, and combatting stereotypes together, Mira feels like Jed’s parents have completely erased everything their relationship with Mira stood for.

Mira spends 10 years working on her book every night after everyone goes to sleep and finally gets published. She gets an offer to talk about and read an excerpt from her book on a famous radio show, but they ask her to change the “unusual names” (298) because it might be too confusing. Jed tells her to defend her work as a creator, and Mira writes back doing just that. She offers a synopsis that refers to “three East Indian teenagers” (298). She gets another reply, which asks her to change East Indian to “Asian Indian” (298). Mira calls her Indian friends and none of them call themselves Asian Indian. However, when she calls Jed, he tells her to pick her battles, correct the guy, and move on. She sticks to her position and keeps the term East Indian but continues to get rejected, and the radio producer even tells her, “Americans (alas!) are not used to the term ‘East Indians’” (301). Mira feels he implied she herself is not an American. She calls Jed, completely enraged, and then writes the man back again. The first email that comes out is a rage letter, but she deletes that and rewrites it. She tells the producer that Asian Indian is not a term they use and that she is “an American, born and raised here" (303). She decides to settle on using South Asian instead.

Mira consults Alison, who reassures her she is not crazy for being frustrated by all of this and feeling the racial tension all around her. Mira feels like every time she succeeds, there is another man like the radio producer, “patting himself on the back for being open-minded while making sure [she scrubs herself] before [she enters]” (306). The morning of the radio show, Mira is getting ready and cannot decide what to wear to look old enough without looking like a foreigner because she knows if she either looks young or foreign, this man will talk down to her on the show. Jed tries to tell her to just be confident and ignore what the guy thinks, but Mira becomes emotional and starts yelling at Jed. She tells him he does not understand what life is like for her or Z because of their skin color or for her as a woman, and she feels hurt that after all their years together he still seems not to know. Jed says he was just trying to help, and when Mira tells him to shut up, he decides he needs to leave the situation and go to work. Mira accuses Jed of not knowing his own family, and the scene ends.

Z’s life is being directly affected by racial tensions as Jed and Mira are still only talking to Jed’s parents occasionally and Z rarely sees them. On Halloween night, they leave to go trick-or-treating, and Z asks if they can just reason with Jed’s parents to stop thinking that way. Jed admits that likely will not happen; they do not see Trump as racist and nothing seems to convince them otherwise. Jed also admits it makes him sad, too.

Mira and Z reminisce about the day Z was born. He had a “high and fierce” (326) mohawk, was eight pounds, and everyone in Mira’s family was thrilled to meet and hold him. A couple days after Z’s birth, Obama is elected President of the United States. Mira, Jed, and all their friends cried because they could not believe it was actually happening. Z is surprised to hear his dad cried, but Mira explains, “He cried for YOU. He cried because our new president was mixed-race just like you, and America believed in him, and suddenly there was a new place for you in the world” (329). The last page of the chapter shows a photograph of baby Z with an Obama election newspaper beside him in his crib. For Mira, Z’s birth and Obama’s election each symbolized the possibility of a brighter future for America, in which people love and respect each other regardless of skin color.

On the day of the 2016 presidential election, Trump against Clinton, Mira and Jed host a party. They are hopeful that Trump will not win, but as the night goes on, their hope dwindles. Mira decides to send Z off to bed so he does not have to hear or witness whatever comes next nor see his parents get angry. Z seems to know what is going on, so Mira takes him to bed and lies down with him there. He keeps asking question after question, telling Mira she said Trump would lose, and Mira shushes him to sleep, placing her forehead on his and calming him.

Mira talks to her mother over the phone. Her mother swears she will continue attending marches and doing what she can to make herself heard. She confides in Mira that her friend Barb told her to be grateful for the country taking her in, and she should not be trying to change it. Mira’s mother tells Mira her response to Barb: “Barbara, you listen to me: This country is lucky to have gotten my husband and children. They have helped make this country great and don’t you ever forget it” (337). Mira is touched, and reminds her mother that she, too, has done the same.

The Jacob family heads to Florida to see Jed’s parents for the first time since before the election. Mira is nervous, and Z senses things might be awkward. Jed is honest and says they could be, but families do these things, and so they are going anyway. Mira admits that she did not want to come but is going for the sake of the family and unity.

Mira ends her memoir with a letter to her son. When Mira was pregnant, she saw a vision of Z on a beach, and she knew he was hers to protect “like nothing else ever will be” (345). When Z is old enough to begin asking difficult questions about race, politics, and the nuances of family life, Mira wants to ensure she provides him the right answers. She wants desperately to bring the diverse and united country she envisions into reality for her son. Mira admits she cannot protect Z from “becoming a brown man in America [… or] from spending a lifetime caught between the beautiful dream of a diverse nation and the complicated reality of one” (346). She realizes she cannot explain why people who love them “choose a world that doesn’t” (346) by voting for Trump, but she assures Z that his capacity to love others is a gift, regardless of how complex or trying it may be. When Mira feels low, she reminds herself of Z, and hopes that when he grows up, he will continue asking endless questions about who he is, why the world is how it is, and what can be done to improve it because that means Z still has hope. If Z still has hope, so does Mira. The novel ends with two pages of a dark starry night with Z’s childhood face etched in white.