A Best Nonfiction Book of the Year from Kirkus
A Best Book of February from Vanity Fair, TIME Magazine, Book Riot, and Ebony
A Best Memoir of the Year So Far from BookPage
A Best Book of the Week from Daily Kos, Literary Hub, and Book Riot
A Most Anticipated Book from Oprah Daily, New York Post, Foreign Policy, Arlington Magazine, Literary Hub, Publishers Weekly, Blavity, The Week, and Traci Thomas on SheReads
“A brilliant, absorbing book, a family story, a tale of power, exile, and calamity, a love letter to Benjamin’s mother that becomes a deep look into the darkness of Haitian history. And it’s also a no-holds-barred autobiography. I couldn’t stop reading.”
—Salman Rushdie, author of Knife
“A moving and valuable book. Benjamin is dogged in pursuing the historical understanding that might help him unravel his family’s psychic anguish…‘How can I better love my mother?’ he asks near the end of the book. Talk to Me does hard, earnest work toward this better love.”
—New York Times Book Review
“Benjamin unearths the secrets of his family’s hidden past in hopes of better understanding his mother…Through intense research, Benjamin looks to understand the far-reaching consequences of the devastating political event.”
—TIME
“A family epic…Talk to Me makes the case that understanding Haiti’s place in the New World might lead to a fuller accounting of the entire hemisphere’s history—including our own.”
—The Atlantic
“[Benjamin’s] new book, Talk to Me, is even more personal, and if possible even braver [than his last].”
—Boston Globe
“Through deep research, Benjamin plumbs secrets—both familial and national.”
—Vanity Fair
“This memoir explores the everlasting effects of this upheaval, offering a moving story on identity, family and how political catastrophe can impact relational dynamics.”
—New York Post
“Unflinching…A poignant critique of America’s impact on migrants and the enduring bonds of family.”
—Oprah Daily
“Benjamin tells a story in Talk to Me that is intimate, harrowing, and complex, showing the freedom and power in restoring personal and political memory and illustrating that sometimes knowing someone’s story is the best path to forgiveness and healing.”
—BreneBrown.com
“A deeply personal meditation on the cost of unspoken histories…A profound exploration of the spaces between us and the courage it takes to bridge them.”
—Esther Perel
“Filled with political intrigue and Benjamin’s exploration of his own identity, the memoir’s greatest gift is perhaps the poignancy of scenes built around his mother Danielle Fignolé Benjamin and her many siblings.”
—The Haitian Times
“Blending memoir with history, the result is a deeply affecting exploration of family, survival, and the hidden costs of political turmoil.”
—Arlington Magazine
“Rare is the memoir that allows us a window into the deeply personal fallout of very public, world-historical moments in history. So it is with Benjamin’s Talk to Me, the story of his family’s unwilling exile from Haiti (his grandfather was briefly president in 1957), and how that unspoken trauma passed from generation to generation.”
—Literary Hub
“Gripping…Benjamin that tells the story of his grandfather, Daniel Fignolé, who was the president of Haiti in 1957 until he was pushed out of power as a result of a coup in which his mother and her siblings were kidnapped.”
—The Root
“Incredibly moving…[A] beautiful, heartfelt work.”
—Book and Film Globe
“Talk to Me is a revelation. As unflinching as it is tender, it is the story of a nation and an intimate portrayal of a family. Rich Benjamin meticulously probes into Haiti’s vast history while sensitively revealing with the painful secrets that his mother and her sisters carried to America. This is a son’s homage to a complex, brilliant woman and a letter of longing to a Haiti that might have been, and could still become.”
—Maaza Mengiste, author of The Shadow King, finalist for the Booker Prize
“Talk to Me is a tour-de-force! I was gripped by every page of this meticulously researched and emotionally rich mother-son memoir, which explores how one family is unmade and remade—again and again—by forces both external and internal. Rich Benjamin is a supremely talented writer, able to convey complex subject matters—the political landscape of Haiti, the parental abandonment that shaped him, and his reckoning with sickle cell anemia, being gay, and numerous family secrets—in elegant and moving prose. You will not be able to put it down!”
—Adrienne Brodeur, author of Little Monsters
“Rich Benjamin contains multitudes. The grandson of a president of Haiti, son of an Ivy League graduate, gifted with a brilliant mother. Now he’s written an eloquent, Argos-eyed love letter.”
—Edmund White, author of The Humble Lover
“Talk to Me is a brilliant exploration of the complexities of the parent-child relationship in Ayiti. Rich Benjamin masterfully defies his family’s silence, uncovering truths long buried. A deeply moving, disciplined journey that refuses to accept what’s left unsaid.”
—SEJOE, writer and producer of Nou Chaje Ak Pwoblèm
“An evocative, wise memoir of a multilayered search for roots.”
—Kirkus, starred review
“This brutal, spellbinding tale is at once a searing domestic drama and an illuminating glimpse at Haiti’s history. Readers will be rapt.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Benjamin is a vivid writer whose honesty spares no one…In Talk to Me, violence, whether in war, politics, crime or families, has a long afterlife that is dangerous to overlook.”
—BookPage, starred review
“[Benjamin’s] training as a cultural anthropologist shines through in his extensive research, and he renders history in lush, expressive detail… The three main characters—grandfather, mother, and Benjamin himself—all try to reconcile their desire for a better world with a desire for their family’s safety. This struggle manifests differently for each of them, and the resulting tension binds the work together. Ultimately, Benjamin’s book succeeds as both a political history of twentieth-century Haiti and a compelling family saga.”
—Booklist
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