Ijeoma Oluo facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Ijeoma Oluo
Born	1980 (1980) Denton, Texas, US
Nationality	American
Other names	Ijeoma Jacobson
Education	BA political science (2007)
Alma mater	Western Washington University
Occupation	Writer
Notable work	So You Want to Talk About Race
Children	2
Relatives	Ahamefule J. Oluo (brother) Lindy West (sister in-law)

Ijeoma Oluo (/iˈdʒoʊmə oʊˈluːoʊ/; born 1980) is an American writer. She is the author of So You Want to Talk About Race and has written for The Guardian, Jezebel, The Stranger, Medium, and The Establishment, where she was also an editor-at-large.

Born in Denton, Texas, and based in Seattle, Washington, in 2015, Oluo was named one of the most influential people in Seattle, and in 2018, she was named one of the 50 most influential women in Seattle. Her writing covers racism, misogynoir, intersectionality, online harassment, the Black Lives Matter movement, economics, parenting, feminism, and social justice.

She gained prominence for articles critiquing race and the invisibility of women's voices, like her April 2017 interview with Rachel Dolezal, published in The Stranger.

Career

Early career

Oluo began her career in technology and digital marketing. She turned to writing in her mid-30s after the 2012 death of Trayvon Martin, who was at the same age as her son, Malcolm, at the time. Fearful for her son as well as her younger brother, a musician then traveling on tour, Oluo began sharing long-held concerns via a blog she had previously devoted to food writing. She has described these initial forays as a significant influence on her writing style, as she hoped that sharing personal stories would be a way to connect to and activate her predominantly white community in Seattle. Oluo has said she was disappointed by the response she initially received, and that many of her existing friends "fell away" instead of engaging in the issues she had begun raising; however, many black women she hadn't previously known reached out to express appreciation and Oluo's profile as a writer grew, with publishers asking to reprint work from her blog and eventually commissioning new writing.

Books

So You Want to Talk About Race

Oluo's book So You Want to Talk about Race was published on January 16, 2018, by the Seal Press imprint of Perseus Books Group's Da Capo. In its "New & Noteworthy" column, The New York Times described the book as "tak[ing] on the thorniest questions surrounding race, from police brutality to who can use the 'N' word." Oluo began the project at the suggestion of her agent, who proposed Oluo write a guidebook to discussing the topics she was writing about regularly. ..... But as she considered the idea, she found many people reached out with topics, and ultimately she decided that a book might save her from having to answer the same questions over and over; in particular she hoped a book's tangible form might reach people in a different way than online work did.

Bustle named So You Want to Talk about Race to a list of 14 recommended debut books by women, praising Oluo's "no holds barred writing style", as well as to a list of the 16 best non-fiction books of January 2018. Harper's Bazaar also named it to a list of 10 best new books of 2018, saying "Oluo crafts a straightforward guidebook to the nuances of conversations surrounding race in America."

Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America

Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America, published December 1, 2020 by the Seal Press imprint of Basic Books, is a historical and contemporary analysis of how white male supremacy affects politics, the workplace, sports and daily life. It was included in recommended reading lists from Time, The Washington Post, and The Seattle Times and has a starred review at Publishers Weekly.

Other projects

Oluo has also performed as a speaker, storyteller and standup comic. Oluo was interviewed in the 2016 documentary short Oh, I Get It included in the Slamdance, Seattle Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, and others, about her experiences as a queer stand-up comedian.

Oluo has a forthcoming book called Be A Revolution, to be published by HarperCollins.

Awards and honors

Seattle Met named Oluo one of the 50 most influential women in Seattle in 2018, and Seattle Magazine named her one of the most influential people in Seattle in 2015, for her "incisive wit, remarkable humor and an appropriate magnitude of rage", and said she is "one of Seattle's strongest voices for social justice." Bustle included Oluo among "13 Authors to Watch in 2018".

Personal life

Oluo was born in Denton, Texas, in 1980. Her father, Samuel Lucky Onwuzip Oluo, is from Nigeria, and her mother, Susan Jane Hawley, is from Kansas and is white. Oluo's younger brother is jazz musician Ahamefule J. Oluo, who is married to Seattle writer Lindy West. From 2001 to 2005, Oluo was married to Chad R. Jacobson, with whom the first of her two children was born.

She graduated from Lynnwood High School in 1999 and later graduated from Western Washington University with a BA in political science in 2007.

She is an atheist and identifies as queer.

See also

In Spanish: Ijeoma Oluo para niños

• Black feminism
• Black Twitter
• Say Her Name
• Womanism