Jia Tolentino

1 week ago | newyorker.com | Jia Tolentino

I feel a troubling kind of opacity in my brain lately—as if reality were becoming illegible, as if language were a vessel with holes in the bottom and meaning was leaking all over the floor. I sometimes look up words after I write them: does “illegible” still mean too messy to read?

2 months ago | interviewmagazine.com | Jia Tolentino |Jake Nevins

To get this out of the way, I’m wildly biased when it comes to Haley Mlotek. I’ve been enamored of her since we first met over a decade ago, when she and Jazmine Hughes took over the editorship of the dearly, monstrously departed website The Hairpin from Emma Carmichael and me.

Dec 7, 2024 | businessandamerica.com | Jia Tolentino

The particulars of this murder are strange and remarkable: it occurred in public; the suspected shooter went to Starbucks beforehand; he got away from the scene via bicycle; he has not yet been found. But the public reaction has been even wilder, even more lawless. The jokes came streaming in on every social-media platform, in the comments underneath every news article.

Dec 7, 2024 | flipboard.com | Jia Tolentino

A Boy, 4, Vanished on Way to Summer Camp. Then a Family Friend's Teenage Son Started Asking Alarming QuestionsMore than 30 years ago, 13-year-old Eric Smith raised a worrying concern with his family when he asked what might happen if it was a kid who killed their 4-year-old neighbor Derrick Robie. Earlier in the morning on Aug. 2, 1993, investigators discovered Robie’s body and quickly determined the young …

Nov 22, 2024 | abigailwise.substack.com | Martin Fritz Huber |Jia Tolentino |Ryleigh Nucilli |Abigail Wise

A mom in Georgia was recently arrested and charged with reckless conduct after her ten-year-old son was found walking less than a mile from her home. I can’t stop thinking about it. Many of us grew up riding our bikes around the neighborhood and walking with friends to the lake down the bike path. Even now, with a two-year-old, I wonder how much freedom is good for him: Is it OK if he wanders around the upper area of our farm, where I can mostly see him and hear him when the window’s cracked?