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Title details for Talk to Me by Rich Benjamin - Wait list

Talk to Me

Lessons from a Family Forged by History

by Rich Benjamin
Rich Benjamin
Audiobook
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Wait time: About 6 weeks
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0 of 1 copy available
Wait time: About 6 weeks
A piercingly powerful memoir, a grandson’s account of the coup that ended his grandfather's presidency of Haiti, the secrecy that shrouded that wound within his family, and his urgent efforts to know his mother despite the past.
“A brilliant, absorbing book...I couldn’t stop reading.” —Salman Rushdie, author of Knife
Rich Benjamin’s mother, Danielle Fignolé, grew up the eldest in a large family living a comfortable life in Port-au-Prince. Her mother was a schoolteacher, her father a populist hero—a labor leader and politician. The first true champion of the black masses, he eventually became the country’s president in 1957. But two weeks after his inauguration, that life was shattered. Soldiers took Danielle’s parents at gunpoint and put them on a plane to New York, a coup hatched by the Eisenhower administration. Danielle and her siblings were kidnapped, and ultimately smuggled out of the country. 
Growing up, Rich knew little of this. No one in his family spoke of it. He didn’t know why his mother struggled with emotional connection, why she was so erratic, so quick to anger. And she, in turn, knew so little about him, about the emotional pain he moved through as a child, the physical agony from his blood disease, while coming to terms with his sexuality at the dawn of the AIDS crisis. For all that they could talk about—books, learning, world events—the deepest parts of themselves remained a mystery to one another, a silence that, the older Rich got, the less he could bear. 
It would take Rich years to piece together the turmoil that carried forward from his grandfather, to his mother, to him, and then to bring that story to light. In Talk to Me, he doesn’t just paint the portrait of his family, but a bold, pugnacious portrait of America—of the human cost of the country’s hostilities abroad, the experience of migrants on these shores, and how the indelible ties of family endure through triumph and loss, from generation to generation.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    February 11, 2025

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9798217013173
      • File size: 306316 KB
      • Duration: 10:38:07

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from December 16, 2024
      Benjamin (Searching for Whitopia) delivers a devastating memoir about the ripple effects of the coup that ousted his grandfather, Haitian president Daniel Fignolé, in 1957. After 19 days in power, Fignolé was forced at gunpoint to resign, and his wife and children were kidnapped and taken to the U.S., where they lived in exile. One of those children was Benjamin’s mother, Danielle, who grew up to become a mercurial woman who frequently beat Benjamin while assuring him that “when you’ve been to hell and back, nothing can ever destroy you.” As a teenager in the 1980s, Benjamin discovered he was gay and harbored secret fears about HIV and AIDS as he struggled with painful complications from sickle cell anemia. After several failed attempts to get Danielle to open up about her past, Benjamin traveled to Haiti as an adult, where he dug up declassified government documents and pieced together the story of his grandfather’s regime, a process that helped bring the roots of his mother’s rage into focus. This brutal, spellbinding tale is at once a searing domestic drama and an illuminating glimpse at Haiti’s history. Readers will be rapt. Photos. Agent: Markus Hoffman, Regal Hoffman & Assoc.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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