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Talk to Me: Lessons from a Family Forged by History Audiobook
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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.
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"Rich Benjamin contains multitudes. The grandson of a president of Haiti, son of an Ivy League graduate, gifted with a brilliant mother who has organized child welfare programs for the United Nations in Africa, he’s also been arrested and thrown into the Tombs, the darkest corner of the New York penal system. An excellent ethnologist, he’s researched for years his family history in Haiti (and the sinister role the USA played in ousting his grandfather), but his mother—undemonstrative to and neglectful of her real children but a humanitarian hero who helped people all over the globe—is the true subject and recipient of this eloquent, Argos-eyed love letter."
— Edmund White, author of The Humble Lover
Quotes
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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 -
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 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 -
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, where silence is often seen as a form of protection. Rich Benjamin masterfully defies this 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 -
“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 -
“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 -
[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 -
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 -
A Publishers Weekly’s Top 10 Memoir & Biography of SpringOne of Traci Thomas’s Most Anticipated Books of 2025 on SheReads
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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 -
“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 -
[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 -
A Most Anticipated Book from Oprah Daily, Foreign Policy, Publishers Weekly, and Traci Thomas on SheReads
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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 -
"Unflinching...A poignant critique of America's impact on migrants and the enduring bonds of family.
— Oprah Daily -
A Most Anticipated Book from Oprah Daily, Foreign Policy, Literary Hub, Publishers Weekly, and Traci Thomas on SheReads
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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
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