Ijeoma Oluo

Early life and education

Oluo was born in Denton, Texas, in 1980. Her father, Samuel Lucky Onwuzip Oluo, is from Nigeria, and her mother, Susan Jane Hawley, is from Kansas and is white. Oluo’s father moved back to Nigeria in her early childhood and died in 2006. She turned to writing in her mid-30s after the 2012 death of Trayvon Martin, who was the same age as her son, Malcolm, at the time. Oluo's columns and news articles appeared in The Guardian and The Stranger newspapers from 2015 through 2017, and she has also written for Jezebel, Medium and The Establishment, a publication based at Medium that Oluo helped launch; she was an editor-at-large. Her writing covers topics like misogynoir, intersectionality, online harassment, the Black Lives Matter movement, race, economics, parenting, feminism and social justice.

Oluo wrote on her blog in November 2017 that USA Today had asked her to write an op-ed, but only on the condition that Oluo's article argue against the need for due process with regard to sexual misconduct allegations such as the high-profile cases associated with the Me Too movement. Specifically she said that the editors "want a piece that says that you don't believe in due process and that if a few innocent men lose their jobs it's worth it to protect women." Oluo was willing to rebut the USA Today editorial that the accused are at great risk of their rights to due process being violated, but said she would not play the role of "their strawman", since she did in fact believe in everyone's right to due process. Twitter took down tweets and banned users who were breaking its terms of service, but Oluo said Facebook did nothing for three days.

Books The Badass Feminist Coloring Book In 2015, Oluo self-published The Badass Feminist Coloring Book using Amazon's CreateSpace. The project began with Oluo sketching outlines of favorite feminists as a stress reliever; encouraged by friends, she launched a Kickstarter campaign to create a coloring book of 45 sketches and accompanying quotes. Well before the deadline, the project raised more than double its goal.

Feminists depicted in The Badass Feminist Coloring Book include Lindy West (Oluo's sister-in-law),

So You Want to Talk About Race

Oluo's book So You Want to Talk about Race was published on January 16, 2018, by the Seal Press imprint of Perseus Books Group's Da Capo. In its "New & Noteworthy" column, The New York Times described the book as "tak[ing] on the thorniest questions surrounding race, from police brutality to who can use the 'N' word." Oluo began the project at the suggestion of her agent, who proposed Oluo write a guidebook to discussing the topics she was writing about regularly. Oluo was initially reluctant, feeling she already spent more time dealing with race than she wanted — speaking to Bitch magazine, she said, "Think about how much time you want to spend, as a Black woman, talking about race, and then dedicating a whole book to talking about race. It's tough for me." as well as to a list of the 16 best non-fiction books of January 2018. Harper's Bazaar also named it to a list of 10 best new books of 2018, saying "Oluo crafts a straightforward guidebook to the nuances of conversations surrounding race in America."

Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America, published December 1, 2020 by the Seal Press imprint of Basic Books, is a historical and contemporary analysis of how white male supremacy affects politics, the workplace, sports and daily life. It was included in recommended reading lists from Time, The Washington Post, and The Seattle Times and has a starred review at Publishers Weekly.

Be a Revolution: How Everyday People Are Fighting Oppression and Changing the World—and How You Can, Too Be a Revolution: How Everyday People Are Fighting Oppression and Changing the World—and How You Can, Too, published January 30, 2024 by Harper Collins, is a collection of profiles and interviews of doers that "connect[ing] racial justice to the arts, disability, education, gender, and policing." It was included in reviews posted from Publishers Weekly. It was covered by ABC News Live and The Seattle Times. Bookforum announced HarperOne's purchase of the book and commented that it was an example of the phenomenon of BookTok's ability to drive book sales on March 22, 2021.

Other projects Oluo has also performed as a speaker, storyteller and standup comic. Oluo was interviewed in the 2016 documentary short Oh, I Get It included in the Slamdance, Seattle Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, and others, about her experiences as a queer stand-up comedian.

Awards and honors Seattle Met named Oluo one of the 50 most influential women in Seattle in 2018, and Seattle Magazine named her one of the most influential people in Seattle in 2015, for her "incisive wit, remarkable humor and an appropriate magnitude of rage", and said she is "one of Seattle's strongest voices for social justice."

Oluo received the Feminist Humanist Award in 2018 and Harvard Humanist of the Year Award in 2020, alongside Sikivu Hutchinson and Mandisa Thomas, from the American Humanist Association.

Personal life In 2022, Oluo married the hip-hop artist Gabriel Teodros. Oluo has two sons who were born around 2002 and 2008, and a grandchild born in 2025.

Oluo is an atheist and identifies as queer.

Notable works