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.

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.

BIO

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.

REVIEWS

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

A Most Anticipated Book from Oprah Daily, Foreign Policy, Arlington Magazine, Literary Hub, Publishers Weekly, 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

“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

[H]  Pantheon Books  /  February 11, 2025

1.3" H x 9.2" L x 6.3" W (1.25 lbs) 320 pages