Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations

Here is the thing, though, the real, true thing I still have trouble admitting: I can't protect you from everything...I can't protect you from spending a lifetime caught between the beautiful dream of a diverse nation and the complicated reality of one. I can't even protect you from the simple fact that sometimes, the people who love us will choose a world that doesn't.

There's a particular kind of close you get when you find someone you can trust in a space you don't.

Sometimes, you go along with it and pretend nothing happened. Sometimes, you hold your breath until the feeling of wanting to be believed passes. Sometimes, you weigh explaining against staying quiet and know they're both just different kinds of heavy.

We think our hearts break only from endings - the love gone, the rooms empty, the future unhappening as we stand ready to step into it - but what about how they can shatter in the face of what is possible.

Because if you grow up to be the kind of person who asks questions about who you are, why things are the way they are, and what we could do to make them better, then you still have hope for this world, and if you still have hope, my love, then so do I.

Sometimes, you don't know how confused you are about something important until you try explaining it to someone else.

Once, before I had you, I saw you. I know it sounds crazy, but it's true. I was pregnant and standing alone outside a party, and when you kicked, I shut my eyes and saw you on a beach we would arrive at almost five years later. You were facing the water and wearing your blue swimsuit and I knew, from the curve in your spine and the nut brown of your skin, that you were mine to protect like nothing else ever will be. So when you first started asking me hard questions, the ones about America and your place here, I wanted to find you the right answers - the kind that would make you feel good, welcome, and loved. I thought if I could just remember the country I'd been raised to believe in, the one I was sure I would eventually get to, I'd be able to get us back there. Here is the thing, though, the real, true thing I still have trouble admitting: I can't protect you from everything. I can't protect you from becoming a brown man in America. I can't protect you from spending a lifetime caught between the beautiful dream of a diverse nation and the complicated reality of one. I can't even protect you from the simple fact that sometimes, the people who love us will choose a world that doesn't. Even now, just writing that down, I want to say something that will make it okay, or even make it make sense, but I can't. Will they ever really understand it themselves? Will they ever change? I have no idea. Our burden is how much we might love them anyway. And this is maybe the part I worry about the most, how the weight of that will twist you into someone you don't want to be, or worse, make you ashamed of your own heart. I hope you will remember that you have nothing to be ashamed of. I hope you will remember that your heart is a good one, and that your capacity to feel love, in all its complexity, is a gift.

I'm supposed to be thankful for everything. Thank you for publishing me! Thank you for asking me to attend an event! Thank you for thanking me for writing characters you could relate to despite them being Indian! Thank you for saying you almost felt like they were just normal people! [...] Thank you for telling me you wish you had been brave enough to date the Indian girls in high school! Thank you for asking me about whether or not you should take a vacation to India! Thank you for telling me that your Indian neighbor makes your hallway smell like curry! Thank you for apologizing for hating curry, like I am curry's mother!

We took bets on what would bring him down, which is what you do when you're trying to break your own heart before your country does it for you.

I was scared to open my mouth. I was scared I would start yelling, and if I started yelling she would be scared of me, and if she was scared of me, she would be right about me.

They're sleepwalking... Someone--Kiese Laymon, I think--said most white people are sleepwalking when it comes to racism in America. They don't see it so they think it doesn't exist anymore. Forcing them to see that it is happening here, now, is like waking up a sleepwalker. They get disoriented. Angry at you instead of about the racism itself.

Sometimes, you don’t know how confused you are about something important until you try explaining it to someone else.

The trouble began when my 6-year-old son, Z, became obsessed with Michael Jackson.

I can't even protect you from the simple fact that sometimes, the people who love us will choose a world that doesn't.

And this is maybe the part I worry about the most, how the weight of that will twist you into someone you don't want to be, or worse, make you ashamed of your own heart. I hope you will remember that you have nothing to be ashamed of. I hope you will remember that your heart is a good one, and that your capacity to feel love, in all its complexity, is a gift.

I like throwing parties, too...I like making lists and buying ingredients and demanding things of my loved ones.

We think our hearts break only from endings—the love gone, the rooms empty, the future unhappening as we stand ready to step into it—but what about how they can shatter in the face of what is possible?

Paula told me that you thought that maybe some of my friends thought you were the help at the party." "Some of your friends thought I was the help at the party." "Are you sure? I just can't imagine anyone actually doing that." Sometimes, you go along with it and pretend nothing happened. Sometimes, you hold your breath until the feeling of wanting to be believed passes. Sometimes, you weigh explaining against staying quiet and know they're both just different kinds of heavy. Sometimes, when it's your mother-in-law - a woman you started calling mom the day you got engaged because you admired the ferocity with which she loved her children, and maybe even wanted some of it for yourself - you look ahead and see all the years of birthdays and graduations and weddings that will be shadowed by things she can't imagine about your life. Sometimes, you can't hold your breath long enough.