Jia Tolentino | |
---|---|
Born | 1988 (age 35–36) |
Nationality | American / Canadian |
Education | University of Virginia (BA) University of Michigan (MFA) |
Occupation(s) | Writer, editor |
Years active | 2013–present |
Employer | The New Yorker |
Jia Angeli Carla Tolentino[1] (born 1988)[2] is an American writer and editor.[3][4] A staff writer for The New Yorker,[5] she previously worked as deputy editor of Jezebel and a contributing editor at The Hairpin.[6] Her writing has also appeared in The New York Times Magazine[7] and Pitchfork.[8] In 2019, her collected essays were published as Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion.
Early life and education
[edit]Tolentino was born in Toronto, Ontario, to parents from the Philippines. When she was four, her family moved to Houston, Texas, where she grew up in a Southern Baptist community.[9][10][11][12][13] Tolentino attended an evangelical megachurch and a small Christian private school.[13] Tolentino started elementary school early and graduated from high school as her class salutatorian.[13]
At the age of 15, she participated in the game show Girls v. Boys in Puerto Rico.[13]
In 2005, Tolentino enrolled at the University of Virginia[14] as a Jefferson Scholar,[15] studying English, joining the Pi Beta Phi sorority, and participating in an a cappella group called The Virginia Belles.[13] After graduating from UVA in 2009, Tolentino spent a year as a Peace Corps volunteer in Kyrgyzstan.[9] Tolentino earned an MFA from the University of Michigan.[16]
Career
[edit]Tolentino began writing for The Hairpin in 2013, hired by then-editor-in-chief Emma Carmichael.[17][18] In 2014, Tolentino and Carmichael both moved to Jezebel, where Tolentino worked for two years before joining The New Yorker.[6]
Tolentino's writing has won accolades[19] across genres. Flavorwire called her a "go-to music source,"[20] while her first short story won the fall 2012 Raymond Carver Short Fiction Contest[21] and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.[22] She has also garnered favorable attention for essays on topics such as race in publishing,[23] marriage,[24] abortion,[25] and notions of female empowerment,[26] as well as for her no-pulled-punches music criticism. The A.V. Club admired "Tolentino's sick burns on Charlie Puth"[27] and Studio 360 observed that even in the near-universal panning of Magic!'s song "Rude", "no criticism has been quite as cutting as Jia Tolentino's."[28] Tolentino has reported extensively on the #MeToo movement.[29][30][31]
In 2017, Tolentino was named in the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in the media category.[32]
On August 6, 2019, Tolentino published a collection of essays entitled Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion.[18] It made its debut on The New York Times Bestseller List on August 25, coming in at #2 on the Combined Print & E-Book Non-fiction list.[33] In a review for The New York Times, Maggie Doherty wrote: "Tolentino’s earnest ambivalence, expressed often throughout the book, is characteristic of millennial life-writing, and it can be contrasted with boomer self-satisfaction and Gen X disaffection in the same genre." Slate columnist Laura Miller wrote in her review of the book, "Tolentino is a classical essayist along the lines of Montaigne, threading her way on the page toward an understanding of what she thinks and feels about life, the world, and herself."[34] Lauren Oyler's negative review of Trick Mirror in the London Review of Books, "skewer[ed] the essays’ shallowness and prose quality," though Tolentino reacted positively to the review, calling it a "cleansing, illuminating experience to be read with such open disgust!"[35][36]
Her 2021 reporting on the conservatorship of Britney Spears, co-authored with Ronan Farrow, attracted international attention,[37][38][39] with the piece being described as "blistering" by Tyler Aquilina in Entertainment Weekly[40] and as a "journalistic reference text on Britney Spears" by Dirk Peitz in Die Zeit.[41]
In January 2023, Tolentino made a cameo in the HBO Max show Gossip Girl.[42]
Personal life
[edit]Tolentino met her husband, Andrew Daley, an architect, while they were students at UVA.[13][43] In the essay "I Thee Dread" in her book Trick Mirror, Tolentino writes at length about her ambivalence toward marriage.[44][45] They have two children.[46]
References
[edit]- ^ "Reason for Dispute: My Name Is Not Angel Polentino". The Billfold. 2013-03-15. Archived from the original on 2019-02-18. Retrieved 2020-05-04.
- ^ Chuck, Erion (2019-11-01). "Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino". Archived from the original on 2020-08-09. Retrieved 2020-05-22.
- ^ "Meet the secret Canadian explaining the Internet to the world, one Wife Guy and Adult Son at a time". nationalpost. Retrieved 23 August 2021.
- ^ Yohannes, Samraweet. "Jia Tolentino among 10 emerging writers to receive $70K Whiting Award". CBC. Retrieved 23 August 2021.
- ^ "Jia Tolentino". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on 2018-02-05. Retrieved 2018-02-06.
- ^ a b Sterne, Peter (June 17, 2016). "New Yorker hires Jezebel deputy editor Jia Tolentino as web staff writer". Politico. Archived from the original on July 2, 2016. Retrieved July 3, 2016.
- ^ Tolentino, Jia (10 March 2016). "'Marvin Gaye' Charlie Puth". The New York Times Magazine. Archived from the original on 31 January 2021. Retrieved 3 July 2016.
- ^ Tolentino, Jia (June 24, 2016). "Laura Mvula: The Dreaming Room Album Review". Pitchfork. Archived from the original on August 14, 2017. Retrieved August 13, 2017.
- ^ a b Gruss, Mike (Summer 2017). "Rising Star: Jia Tolentino has quickly made a name for herself as an essayist". Virginia Magazine. Archived from the original on 2018-02-07. Retrieved 2018-02-06.
- ^ Tolentino, Jia (31 January 2017). "The Most American Thing". New Yorker. Archived from the original on 31 August 2017. Retrieved 30 August 2017.
- ^ Tolentino, Jia. "I'm a Canadian citizen". Twitter. Archived from the original on 31 January 2021. Retrieved 30 August 2017.
- ^ Tolentino, Jia (March 31, 2017). "Mike Pence's Marriage and the Beliefs That Keep Women from Power". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on August 14, 2017. Retrieved 2017-08-14.
- ^ a b c d e f Langmuir, Molly (2019-07-24). "Jia Tolentino Makes Sense Out of This Nonsense Moment". ELLE. Archived from the original on 2019-08-13. Retrieved 2019-08-10.
- ^ Tolentino, Jia (August 13, 2017). "Charlottesville and the Effort to Downplay Racism in America". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on August 13, 2017. Retrieved 2017-08-14.
- ^ Hamilton, Heath (April 29, 2005). "Second Baptist student wins Jefferson Scholarship at the University of Virginia". Your Houston News. Archived from the original on June 10, 2016. Retrieved July 3, 2016.
- ^ "Jia Tolentino - Jefferson Scholars Foundation". jeffersonscholars.org. Archived from the original on 2016-08-12. Retrieved 2016-07-03.
- ^ Tolentino, Jia. "Bye, I Hate It". Jezebel. Archived from the original on 2017-08-13. Retrieved 2017-08-14.
- ^ a b Maggie Doherty (2019-08-04). "Jia Tolentino on the 'Unlivable Hell' of the Web and Other Millennial Conundrums". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 2019-08-04. Retrieved 2019-08-04.
- ^ Ransom, Brian (7 August 2019). "Please Fire Jia Tolentino". The Paris Review. Retrieved 21 February 2023.
- ^ "Staff Picks: Flavorwire's Favorite Cultural Things This Week". Flavorwire. 5 March 2014. Archived from the original on 26 August 2016. Retrieved 3 July 2016.
- ^ Liang, Rio (May 15, 2013). "Q&A with Jia Tolentino". Carve Magazine. Archived from the original on August 15, 2016. Retrieved July 3, 2016.
- ^ "Short Story Review: The Odyssey by Jia Tolentino". Fictionphile. 1 February 2013. Archived from the original on 9 August 2016. Retrieved 3 July 2016.
- ^ Bovy, Phoebe Maltz (12 October 2015). "White Male Writers: No Longer the Default, and Not Terribly Interesting". The New Republic. Archived from the original on 29 June 2016. Retrieved 3 July 2016.
- ^ Odell, Amy (30 December 2013). "Are We Seriously Still Judging Women Who Want to Get Married?". Cosmopolitan. Archived from the original on 13 August 2016. Retrieved 3 July 2016.
- ^ Tolentino, Jia. "Interview With a Woman Who Recently Had an Abortion at 32 Weeks". Jezebel. Archived from the original on 2018-10-13. Retrieved 2018-10-01.
- ^ King-Miller, Lindsay (November 21, 2014). "Pretty Unnecessary: Taking beauty out of body positivity". Bitch Media. Archived from the original on April 19, 2016. Retrieved July 3, 2016.
- ^ Dart, Chris (10 March 2016). "The New York Times' "Future Of Music" list discusses "the era of the song"". The A.V. Club. Archived from the original on 9 July 2016. Retrieved 3 July 2016.
- ^ Rameswaram, Sean (August 26, 2014). "Sideshow Podcast: "Rude" by Magic! Is the Worst Best Song of the Summer". Studio 360. Archived from the original on September 19, 2016. Retrieved July 3, 2016.
- ^ Waldman, Paul (2018-01-25). "Opinion | Happy Hour Roundup". Washington Post. Archived from the original on 2018-01-31. Retrieved 2018-02-01.
- ^ Chotiner, Isaac (2018-01-26). "I Have to Ask: The Jia Tolentino Edition". Slate. ISSN 1091-2339. Archived from the original on 2018-02-01. Retrieved 2018-02-01.
- ^ Chotiner, Isaac. "The New Yorker's Jia Tolentino on How We're Missing the Real Issue of #MeToo". Slate Magazine. Archived from the original on 2018-01-30. Retrieved 2018-02-01.
- ^ "30 Under 30 2017: Media". Forbes. Retrieved 2022-10-14.
- ^ "The New York Times Best Sellers". The New York Times. 2019-08-25. Archived from the original on 2019-08-28. Retrieved 2020-08-23.
- ^ Miller, Laura (2019-08-13). "Jia Tolentino's Debut Is a Hall of Mirrors You'll Never Want to Leave". Slate. Archived from the original on 2020-07-26. Retrieved 2020-08-23.
- ^ "Los Angeles Review of Books". Los Angeles Review of Books. 2022-01-13. Retrieved 2023-01-30.
- ^ "@jiatolentino". Twitter. Retrieved 2023-01-30.
- ^ Mogensen, Jackie Flynn. "The New Yorker just published a major investigation into Britney Spears' conservatorship". Mother Jones. Retrieved 2021-07-05.
- ^ "¿Por qué Britney Spears llamó al 911 un día antes de la audiencia para liberarse de su tutela?". El Heraldo de México (in Spanish). 5 July 2021. Retrieved 2021-07-05.
- ^ "Chilling catch-22 of Britney's conservatorship". NewsComAu. 2021-07-05. Retrieved 2021-07-05.
- ^ "Britney Spears called 911 to report conservatorship abuse the night before court testimony". EW.com. Retrieved 2021-07-05.
- ^ Peitz, Dirk (2021-07-05). "Das Toxische des Ruhms". Die Zeit. Retrieved 2021-07-05.
- ^ Zukin, Meg (2023-01-12). "Gossip Girl Recap: Truth in Cinema". Vulture. Retrieved 2023-01-13.
- ^ "2021 Class Day Speaker Jia Tolentino: An Interview". Harvard Graduate School of Design. 2021-05-27. Retrieved 2022-02-22.
- ^ Bryant, Kenzie (2019-08-05). "Jia Tolentino Doesn't Have All the Answers". Vanity Fair. Archived from the original on 2021-01-31. Retrieved 6 September 2020.
- ^ Tolentino, Jia (2019). Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion. Penguin Random House LLC.
- ^ Tolentino, Jia (2024-05-04). "The Hidden-Pregnancy Experiment". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved 2024-05-05.
External links
[edit]- Official website
- Jia Tolentino at The New Yorker
- Interview with Jia Tolentino at Catapult.co
- All the Greedy Young Abigail Fishers and Me, Jezebel, June 28, 2016.