KPFA Radio 94.1 FM with C-Span presents
Jill Louise Busby & Sabrina Jacobs
Unfollow Me: Essays on Complicity
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September 16, Thursday, 7:00 PM
“Jill lets us know out the gate that she ain’t come to play. This book is real, raw, and unrelenting. Dark, satirical, full of brilliance and bad ass’ness. Now is definitely not the time to be unfollowing Jill.” —Killer Mike
“Unfollow Me forced me to challenge who I’ve presented myself as, to confront the invisible tether between irreverence and conformity, especially as it pertains to conversations and stances around identity and technology. Busby’s voice is sharp. Sharper yet is the feeling that Busby is asking us to complicate our arguments and muster up the moxie to see our many selves in a more honest light. And for that, I am grateful.” —Jason Reynolds, # 1 New York Times bestselling author of Miles Morales: Spider Man, the Track series, Long Way Down, and Stamped, with Ibram X. Kendi
Bloomsbury is excited to publish Unfollow Me: Essays on Complicity by Jill Louise Busby, sometimes known as Jillisblack.
Unfollow Me is about tokenism, micro-fame, and inhabiting spaces—real and virtual, black and white—where complicity is the price of entry. Busby’s social commentary manages to be both wryly funny and achingly open-hearted as she recounts her shape-shifting moves among the subtle hierarchies of progressive communities. Unfollow Me is a sharply personal and self-questioning critique of white fragility (and other words for racism), respectability politics (and other words for shame), and all the places where fear masquerades as progress.
Jill Louise Busby spent years in the nonprofit sector specializing in Diversity & Inclusion. She spoke at academic institutions, businesses, and detention centers on the topics of Race, Power, and Privilege and delivered over two-hundred workshops to nonprofit organizations all over the California Bay Area. In 2016, fed up with what passed as progressive in the Pacific Northwest, Busby uploaded a one-minute video about race, white institutions, and faux liberalism to Instagram. The video received millions of views across social platforms. As her pithy persona Jillisblack became an it-voice weighing in on all things race-based, Jill began to notice parallels between her performance of “diversity” in the white corporate world and of “wokeness” for her online following. Both, she realized, were scripted.
Sabrina Jacobs is the producer and host of KPFA’s popular show “A Rude Awakening.” In addition. she is a frequent host and interviewer on KPFA’S Zoom webinar series with contemporary authors.