Wikipedia

Jia Tolentino

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.

Jia Tolentino
Born1988 (age 35–36)
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
NationalityAmerican / Canadian
EducationUniversity of Virginia (BA)
University of Michigan (MFA)
Occupation(s)Writer, editor
Years active2013–present
EmployerThe New Yorker

Early life and education

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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

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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

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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

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  1. ^ "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.
  2. ^ Chuck, Erion (2019-11-01). "Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino". Archived from the original on 2020-08-09. Retrieved 2020-05-22.
  3. ^ "Meet the secret Canadian explaining the Internet to the world, one Wife Guy and Adult Son at a time". nationalpost. Retrieved 23 August 2021.
  4. ^ Yohannes, Samraweet. "Jia Tolentino among 10 emerging writers to receive $70K Whiting Award". CBC. Retrieved 23 August 2021.
  5. ^ "Jia Tolentino". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on 2018-02-05. Retrieved 2018-02-06.
  6. ^ 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.
  7. ^ 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.
  8. ^ 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.
  9. ^ 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.
  10. ^ Tolentino, Jia (31 January 2017). "The Most American Thing". New Yorker. Archived from the original on 31 August 2017. Retrieved 30 August 2017.
  11. ^ Tolentino, Jia. "I'm a Canadian citizen". Twitter. Archived from the original on 31 January 2021. Retrieved 30 August 2017.
  12. ^ 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.
  13. ^ 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.
  14. ^ 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.
  15. ^ 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.
  16. ^ "Jia Tolentino - Jefferson Scholars Foundation". jeffersonscholars.org. Archived from the original on 2016-08-12. Retrieved 2016-07-03.
  17. ^ Tolentino, Jia. "Bye, I Hate It". Jezebel. Archived from the original on 2017-08-13. Retrieved 2017-08-14.
  18. ^ 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.
  19. ^ Ransom, Brian (7 August 2019). "Please Fire Jia Tolentino". The Paris Review. Retrieved 21 February 2023.
  20. ^ "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.
  21. ^ Liang, Rio (May 15, 2013). "Q&A with Jia Tolentino". Carve Magazine. Archived from the original on August 15, 2016. Retrieved July 3, 2016.
  22. ^ "Short Story Review: The Odyssey by Jia Tolentino". Fictionphile. 1 February 2013. Archived from the original on 9 August 2016. Retrieved 3 July 2016.
  23. ^ 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.
  24. ^ 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.
  25. ^ 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.
  26. ^ 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.
  27. ^ 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.
  28. ^ 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.
  29. ^ Waldman, Paul (2018-01-25). "Opinion | Happy Hour Roundup". Washington Post. Archived from the original on 2018-01-31. Retrieved 2018-02-01.
  30. ^ 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.
  31. ^ 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.
  32. ^ "30 Under 30 2017: Media". Forbes. Retrieved 2022-10-14.
  33. ^ "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.
  34. ^ 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.
  35. ^ "Los Angeles Review of Books". Los Angeles Review of Books. 2022-01-13. Retrieved 2023-01-30.
  36. ^ "@jiatolentino". Twitter. Retrieved 2023-01-30.
  37. ^ Mogensen, Jackie Flynn. "The New Yorker just published a major investigation into Britney Spears' conservatorship". Mother Jones. Retrieved 2021-07-05.
  38. ^ "¿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.
  39. ^ "Chilling catch-22 of Britney's conservatorship". NewsComAu. 2021-07-05. Retrieved 2021-07-05.
  40. ^ "Britney Spears called 911 to report conservatorship abuse the night before court testimony". EW.com. Retrieved 2021-07-05.
  41. ^ Peitz, Dirk (2021-07-05). "Das Toxische des Ruhms". Die Zeit. Retrieved 2021-07-05.
  42. ^ Zukin, Meg (2023-01-12). "Gossip Girl Recap: Truth in Cinema". Vulture. Retrieved 2023-01-13.
  43. ^ "2021 Class Day Speaker Jia Tolentino: An Interview". Harvard Graduate School of Design. 2021-05-27. Retrieved 2022-02-22.
  44. ^ 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.
  45. ^ Tolentino, Jia (2019). Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion. Penguin Random House LLC.
  46. ^ Tolentino, Jia (2024-05-04). "The Hidden-Pregnancy Experiment". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved 2024-05-05.
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