There are two stereotypes that 
routinely plague the modern writ-
er. One is the recluse, the innocent 
bookworm, who recedes into the 
woods like Thoreau and writes 
about butterflies and the mean-
ing of life for days on end. No one 
knows how they subsist on tea and 
biscuits alone. The other is, essen-
tially, the newspaper editor from 
“Spider-Man.” These writers are 
the human equivalent of a pack of 
Marlboro Reds. In between yelling 
about the deadline and chugging 
acrid coffee, they stay up until 2 
a.m. trying to finish a piece on what 
Quentin Tarantino means to them. 
I like to think of these arche-
types as the bookends of the spec-
trum for self-branded writers. Jia 
Tolentino, celebrated staff writer 
for The New Yorker and author of 
the recently-released essay collec-
tion “Trick Mirror,” sits smack dab 
in the middle. 
Tolentino, who young writ-
ers and journalists (or at least the 
ones I know) have christened the 
second coming of Susan Sontag, is 
unabashedly honest in her analysis. 
With that honesty, and her place-
ment as the fulcrum of a made-up 
personality scale, she is somehow 
able to write about everything with 
the charm and hilarity of an expert 
in each topic. It’s an uncanny skill, 

one that allows her to attack sub-
jects like the rise of “step on my 
neck” fandom with the same feroc-
ity she does when dissecting the 
history of Trump’s assault allega-
tions. “There could potentially be a 
world in which I write about books 
all day,” Tolentino said in a phone 
interview with The Michigan 
Daily, “but it’s nice to accurately 
reflect literally just what’s on my 
mind.”
When I called Tolentino a few 
weeks ago for this interview, I 
didn’t feel the same anxiety that I 
typically do when on assignment. 
It must have been because I felt 
like I already knew her, the same 
way that I assume many of her 
thousands of Twitter and Insta-
gram followers do, too. The writer 
has always been game to share her 
thoughts: “There are certain types 
of personalities that the internet 
favors, that can work well within 
the performative structures of the 
internet.” She added, “I’ve always 
had that kind of personality, I’ve 
always been extremely open.” 
Tolentino takes to social media 
with an ease often only seen in 
figure skaters and birds of prey 
swooping through the air. She 
knows what she’s doing, but she 
might as well have fun on the ride. 
Watching 
Tolentino’s 
rise 
through the annals of literary jour-
nalism has been exciting, to say the 
least. To see someone unapologeti-
cally young be so successful at not 
only digital media through her edi-

torship at Jezebel, but then become 
a star in the crown of traditional 
magazine publishing, gives hope to 
a so-called dying industry. She has 
no niche, no specific beat, no bor-
ders to her sea of subjects.
“I don’t want to write about 
the same things all the time, and I 
don’t think about the same things 
all the time, or think at the same 
level of seriousness all the time,” 
she elaborated. “You can really 
throw your voice around, like at 
Jezebel I could write dead serious 
about something and then I could 
write something so stupid, like a 
meme, about a subject that I take 
very seriously.” In the same vein, 
the writer has never given up her 
wit and cultural precocity in lieu 
of her literary venue’s unspoken 
parameters. 
Her piece about the rise of Juul-
ing was hilarious, yes, but it was 
also in the top 10 most read New 
Yorker articles of 2018. In my own 
experience, I’ve used her articles 
to explain things like vaping to my 
parents, but my friends and I also 
applaud her for getting the phrase 
“real men eat ass” into a heritage 
magazine. She has struck gold in 
a balancing act, one that is enter-
taining to watch her navigate in its 
own right.
“Trick Mirror” is no exception 
to the rule of her talent, instead 
acting as an extension of both her 
writing for other publications and 
personality alone. Tolentino is 
the only writer I can think of that 

picks apart the Book of Revelation 
and the history of MDMA in the 
same breath. It’s what makes her so 
refreshing to read, in a media land-
scape clogged with sadness and 
fluff. Reading her writing means 
laughing and learning at the same 
time. 
Tolentino 
walks 
the 
line 
between comedy and blinding 
truth 
carefully, 
successfully 
rep-
licating the path 
that we all tra-
verse 
through-
out our lives in 
her writing. Her 
transparency 
on 
social media fol-
lows 
the 
same 
rules. “It seems 
like the only way 
of making social 
media bearable is 
literally just not 
thinking about what you’re doing 
and hope that it’s ok! Because it’s 
just like life, you know?” Tolentino 
continued, laughing, “I actively 
try to guard against … that sort 
of calcification — I try to allow a 
lot of space for inconsistency.” I 
believe this avoidance of creating 
a “brand” is what makes the writer 
so approachable. She is incredibly 
smart, incredibly online, incredibly 
funny, yet Tolentino’s understand-
ing of her own identity creates a 
level of comfort that serves as the 
foundation for that variety. 
In “Trick Mirror,” Tolentino 
writes about religion, scams, drugs, 
athleisure — everything under the 
sun. But it’s always obvious who’s 
talking — the writer captures the 
human phenomenon of curiosity 
better than anyone I’ve ever read. 
The inconsistency she was talking 
about isn’t a negative trait of the 
modern era, as it is typically seen, 
but a strength. The pressures of 
the internet, as she speaks about in 
the book’s first essay, have forced 
many to turn themselves into a 
solidified brand, avoiding change 
at any cost. We have to remember 
that although it seems like self-
branding is necessary, we’re not all 
Kardashians here.
Tolentino, however, embraces 
that unpredictability and runs 
with it. Reading her essays makes 
you feel like you could learn any-
thing, because hey, Jia did. Know-
ing yourself is a more crucial asset 
than anything else these days, 
and allows for a bigger worldview. 
Tolentino’s talent is capturing this 
perspective in words, inspiring her 
readers to take the same leap. 
Beyond her raw talent for writ-
ing, Tolentino’s “it” factor, the 

reason “Trick Mirror” is flying off 
shelves and appearing every three 
tweets in my newsfeed, is her gen-
uine excitement for life. The last 
four years have been a rollercoast-
er, something that Tolentino says 
was the impetus for her book in the 
first place: “I was so miserable in 
early 2017, and I was like, I’m going 
to be miserable for the next four 
years.” She reflect-
ed, “A book is one 
way to be miser-
able in a way that’s 
really productive.” 
Productive or not, 
the fruit of her 
misery is surpris-
ingly 
optimistic. 
The world since 
2016 has seemed 
like a cruel joke to 
many, but she sees 
a reason to laugh 
at it. To Tolentino, 
the urgent nature of our country’s 
problems are countered by brilliant 
art, books and cultural phenomena 
that make surviving the darkness 
worth it. 
Tolentino is fascinated by Gen 
Z and their relationship with the 
media and internet. We talked 
extensively about the differences 
in social media between those in 
my age group, her millennial expe-
rience and the experiences of those 
younger than me. She interviewed 
many Gen Z-ers for an upcom-
ing piece, saying that “It’s really 
interesting, as someone who still 
interacts with the world as a young 
person, to be talking to these teen-
agers, and I’m asking them about 
these extremely basic facts of life, 
like it’s really nothing to them, and 
it’s very clear they feel as though 
they’re talking to someone that’s 
70, you know?” Despite this, they 
would probably find Tolentino’s 
writing pretty interesting, maybe 
even let out a giggle or two. She 
is undeniably relevant to any age 
group, something that not many 
people can claim. 
“I feel weirdly gratified by get-
ting, I mean, especially with femi-
nism, an email from a 75-year-old 
woman, being like, ‘I really like 
this thing you wrote,’” Tolentino 
said on the subject. She has active-
ly avoided settling into the siloed 
nature of modern media, instead 
challenging herself to get over 
that “internal hurdle,” “like (she’s) 
going to write a piece about a phe-
nomenon that has to make sense to 
somebody who has no idea about 
anything about it.”

ARTS
6

Thursday, August 15, 2019
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Jia Tolentino @ 

Literati

Monday, Aug. 26

7:00 p.m.

Free

A talk with Jia Tolentino

BOOKS INTERVIEW

ELENA MUDD

CLARA SCOTT 
Senior Arts Editor

Read more at michigandaily.com