Ijeoma Oluo’s first two books—So You Want To Talk About Race (2018) and Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America (2020)—catapulted the Seattle-based writer to national prominence. Her name has appeared on both the Time 100 and the Root 100 lists. But the work was painful, and engaging with histories of racism had its consequences. “My heart and soul as a Black woman were so hurt,” she writes in the introduction to her new book, Be a Revolution: How Everyday People Are Fighting Oppression and Changing the World—And How You Can, Too (HarperOne, Jan. 30). She needed to turn toward hope and love. She found them among the people she profiles in the book—activists, teachers and writers working in every facet of community activism—from whom she draws ideas that can inspire anyone, anywhere, to start making a difference. Kirkus recently spoke with Oluo by Zoom; our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

You reached out to people whose work touches many areas, from criminal justice to the arts to education. How did you decide whom you wanted to talk with, and what the main subject areas were going to be? 

At first, I was going to try to put everything in there. I think anyone who writes a book like this starts out incredibly ambitious. I wanted to research all of these issues in-depth first, before I started identifying people, even though I had people in the back of my mind. Because of the intersectional nature of the work, it just took on a life of its own. I could have written a book about each chapter and expanded forever. 

You write about how the research changed and challenged you. What’s it like to share that kind of vulnerability with readers? 

I think it’s vital that we all be more honest about these things. One of the most damaging things about movement work, for people who would call themselves “the left,” is that we like to act like we were born fully formed into this work. And when we do that, we tell people that they are too far behind to ever catch up. I can do this work my whole life, and I’m still going to be tripped up by the things I didn’t get or didn’t know or the biases I still had. And that’s actually a really beautiful part of the work if you’re open to it. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t make mistakes. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t cause harm, because of the ways in which we’ve all been harmed ourselves. 

You are a Black woman with a Nigerian father and a white American mother. Can you talk a little bit about how your own upbringing affected you and your work as a writer? 

I had an interesting upbringing. I grew up in the suburbs outside of Seattle [which were] very, very white. My brother and I were one grade apart, and we were always the only Black kids, so we were hypervisible. Our mom tried so hard, after my father went back to Nigeria, to make sure we stayed connected to Black people; specifically, she really wanted us to have pride in the Nigerian community, which had been so loving and accepting of her in a way she had never had in her life. And she wanted that for us so desperately. But we were still incredibly isolated. We had to be really vigilant. From a young age, we had to be really aware of race, because it would pop up. We’d be walking down the streets, and kids would yell the N-word at us.

As a Black girl who loved reading and loved words and was excited about learning, I became this unicorn—this teachers’ pet, but still not really seen as a human. I had teachers who would invest time and effort into my learning. And then I had teachers who would have me clean their house. So I grew up really aware of that group, very observant, because the things that people wouldn’t say were the things that were gonna get you in trouble. And I think that contributed a lot to my work. I’ve spent my life watching how race works, because I’ve had to know how it works in order to be safe. And the silence was always the thing that was harmful for me. 

I’m curious about your position as a Black woman writer and who your readers are. Whom, in terms of race, do you feel like you’re writing for? And what do you hear back from readers? 

I think there’s a decent amount of white people who read me. But I also think that populations of color, especially Black people who read my work, are often erased by the publishing industry. The industry courts white readers, and the conversations that I’ve had [with publishers] over the years—demanding that I make my work more accessible to white people, that I explain every nuance within the Black community to white people, that I translate every bit of slang—are really, really frustrating. 

But the emails I get, the letters I get—those are Black high schoolers, [and] a lot of Asian students, because I try to talk about things like the model minority myth, and specifically about how racism impacts Asian populations and Pacific Islander populations. A  lot of younger Asian people don’t get to see that in more popular books. [They are] the people who take the time to write me, reach out to me, and talk about what my work means to them. When I’m out doing events in [the] Black community, that’s where the connection is deep and real. It can be really easy in the industry to forget that exists. The publishing industry would have me in white rooms talking with white people about my work 24/7.

Overall, this book is so hopeful and so much about love, but in the chapter toward the end about education, I sensed fear and sadness. In the midst of book bans and curriculum restrictions that are robbing children of a full view of American history and literature, how and where do you find hope? 

That was the chapter I struggled with the most, because I just felt gutted. One thing that I hope people can see is that we got here because a very small vocal minority decided to show up at city council meetings and politicize a really neglected field of our politics. And they were very successful and organized about it. I just want people to understand [that] we brought this on ourselves by not being there—but we can change it, we can show up. And right now that means listening to these really loud and abusive and kind of violent community members who are weaponizing fear and bigotry. But it can mean listening to parents speaking with love and passion and care and concern for their community. We just have to show up, and we have to be organized and smart and strategic about it.

Kate Tuttle is a writer and editor in New Jersey.