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.

A Best Book of February from Vanity Fair, TIME Magazine, Book Riot, and Ebony

A Best Book of the Week from Daily Kos, Literary Hub, and Book Riot

A Most Anticipated Book from Oprah Daily, 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

“[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

"Unflinching...A poignant critique of America's impact on migrants and the enduring bonds of family."
—Oprah Daily

“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

“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

"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

RICH BENJAMIN is a cultural anthropologist and the author of Searching for Whitopia. His writing has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, and elsewhere, and he’s appeared as a commentator on MSNBC and CNN. His work has received support from the Bellagio Center, Civitella Ranieri Foundation, Columbia Law School, the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, the Ford Foundation, Princeton University, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, and the Harvard-Radcliffe Institute. View titles by Rich Benjamin

Talk to Me

Lessons from a Family Forged by History

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