Just a Theory

Trans rights are human rights

Posts about Interviews

Jia Tolentino on… Gestures Vaguely

Kottke’s right, this interview with Jia Tolentino in Interview is soo great. In a few cogent, direct, clear paragraphs, she covers her views on quarantine, Covid, reading, pregnancy, capitalism, Black Lives Matter, policy changes, protest, climate change, and more. An example, on white discomfort:

I’m also suspicious of the way that Not Being Racist is a project that people seem to be approaching like boot camp. To deepen your understanding of race, of this country, should make you feel like the world is opening up, like you’re dissolving into the immensity of history and the present rather than being more uncomfortably visible to yourself. Reading more Black writers isn’t like taking medicine. People ought to seek out the genuine pleasure of decentering themselves, and read fiction and history alongside these popular anti-racist manuals, and not feel like they need to calibrate their precise degree of guilt and goodness all the time.

The whole thing’s a gem, don’t miss it.

(Via Kottke)