Last Wednesday March 27th at 7pm in Tishman the next reader for the Bennington Literature reading series was the 2024 pick for Ben Belitt Distinguished Visiting Faculty, Jia Tolentino. From the Bennington Events page: “Tolentino is a staff writer at The New Yorker, the author of the bestselling essay collection Trick Mirror, and a screenwriter. Formerly, she was the deputy editor at Jezebel and a contributing editor at the Hairpin. She grew up in Texas, received her undergraduate degree at the University of Virginia, and got her MFA in fiction from the University of Michigan. In 2020, she received a Whiting Award as well as the Jeannette Haien Ballard Prize. Her work has also appeared in The New York Times Magazine and Pitchfork, among other places.”
The reading was hosted by faculty member Franny Choi who introduced college president Laura Walker to the podium. President Walker talked about the Ben Belitt Distinguished Visiting Faculty Program. Wearing a navy blue sweater with large triangles on each side President Laura Walker thanked the Winston Foundation for making the Ben Belitt program possible.
The President sat down and Franny Choi continued to eagerly welcome Jia Tolentino to the stage. She also calls attention to the table set up to the left of the podium stocked with new copies of Tolentino’s book of essays titled Trick Mirror.
Tolentino came up to the podium with a giant smile on her face and said how lucky she was to be on this campus every week. She also mentioned one of her best friends attended Bennington and she had been asking about a teaching role here for some time. She pulled out a packet of papers stapled together and told the audience that what they were about to hear was actually a first draft of a new essay about surveillance.
The essay focused on experiencing pregnancy during the height of the pandemic, being alone at home with only her husband and dog. Mostly unsurveilled, unlike most people going through pregnancy.
She described an experiment she did when pregnant with her second child to see if she could hide the pregnancy from her phone. She avoided looking up baby names, monthly updates on the size of the fetus, and didn’t download any apps to track the progress. She stopped the experiment after three months and got her first diaper ad.
The essay goes on to mention the overturning of Roe V. Wade and how this intense surveillance of a pregnancy can have unintended consequences. She brought up instances where women were sentenced because of their miscarriages or abortions and how the tracking on phones can be used in court against the person.
The next section of the essay is about after the baby is born, and looks at malevolent surveillance vs. parental supervision. She mentions $300 smart devices to watch a baby that’s only one room over. The room erupted in applause.
It was around 7:30 when the Q&A began. Instead of the typical fashion of Franny Choi dashing around Tishman handing the microphone to people in the audience there were two microphones set up on the stairs on either side of the seating area. But people quickly realized that we could get away without using the mics.
Most of the questions were about social media and writing for the New Yorker. Quite a few questions about AI came up, to which Tolentino said flat out she doesn’t want AI, and she’s interested in writing because of the person behind it.
At the end of the Q&A section, after Jia Tolentino admitted to the audience that she has to pay for her own New Yorker subscription, the floor became flooded with people purchasing Tolentino’s book and waiting in line to get their copies signed.
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