Discussing the Complexities of Race, Faith, Politics, and Power with Alexis Okeowo

Journalist, author, and New Yorker staff writer Alexis Okeowo visited UC Santa Barbara’s Campbell Hall on October 14 to discuss her new book, Blessings and Disasters: A Story of Alabama. The talk was moderated by UCSB Arts and Lectures Senior Arts Writer Charles Donelan and was part of the Justice for All Programming Initiative. The evening started with a discussion between Okeowo and Donelan, who also recorded a podcast earlier that week. Okeowo also read passages from her book during the presentation.

Okeowo, daughter to Nigerian immigrant parents, grew up in Alabama, bringing a rare “insider-outsider” perspective to the state. Blessings and Disasters is a memoir that “immerses us in a landscape dominated today not by cotton fields, but by Amazon warehouses, encountering powerful faith-based business leaders lobbying for tribal sovereignty, and small-town women questioning conservative politics,” according to a UCSB Arts and Lectures release. She explores the intersectionality of race, faith, politics, and power, “revealing systemic inequities and unexpected stories of resilience and change.”

“For a lot of my career, I’ve spent time reporting abroad, mostly in the African continent,” Okeowo said early in the evening. “Post9–August2016 election, the way the country was talking about the South, about Alabama, stirred something in me. There was a single story about the Deep South … it didn’t include my experience, didn’t include the experiences of people I know. It didn’t feel nuanced.”

Okeowo explained that her newest book seeks to “complicate that story,” combining investigative journalism with personal insight. “Obviously, I have personal stakes because this is home,” she said. “But [I also felt] like that would be an interesting challenge.”

During her childhood, Okeowo attended public school in Alabama while her parents maintained tight-knit communities consisting of other West African immigrants. “It’s sort of like straddling two worlds,” she explained. “I did feel Southern, but I also felt removed, and then later [realized] that that status is what is influencing my life. It’s what encouraged me to pursue reporting and writing, being able to observe from a distance and sort of write about it, because it’s something I felt as a child.”

In her twenties, Okeowo traveled to Uganda to report on its civil war between the government and the rebel group, Lord’s Resistance Army. Her first book, A Moonless, Starless Sky: Ordinary Women and Men Fighting Extremism in Africa, spotlights a couple who had met in captivity during that civil war. After escaping, the couple chose to remain together, raising a family in freedom. “I think about the journalist’s role in these kinds of situations,” she said. “You’re reporting on extremely marginalized communities — what is your responsibility in going in and taking the story … and what do you leave in your wake?”

The same ethical awareness extends to her reporting in Alabama for The New Yorker, where she followed the lives of Pamela Rush and Catherine Flowers in the Black Belt, a place facing significant climate, health, and health equity crises due to dense soil complicating sewage systems.

In her latest book, Blessings and Disasters, Okeowo focuses on five self-described “subjects.” Later during the evening, she said that a large theme of this book focuses on the questions, “Why do people stay in a place that other people have written off?” and “Why do you want to stay in a place that you may love but probably doesn’t love you back?”

When reflecting on her journalism career, Okeowo credited genuine curiosity and an eagerness to go on her own path. “One thing I tell young journalists is something that helped me was not going the way I thought you should go, which is you should go to New York, you should go to a big city after graduating…. Going to Uganda, there was less competition; there was less density. And so, I was able to tell stories that other people weren’t doing.”

Prior to her appearance at Campbell in the evening, earlier in the day, Okeowo met with UCSB students at a “Lunch and Learn” event hosted by UCSB’s Office of Black Student Development.