Writing seemed to come naturally to Alex Tizon. By the beginning of 2017, he had won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting with the Seattle Times and had served as a bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times. His book, Big Little Man: In Search of My Asian Self, had met with critical acclaim, and he was working as an assistant professor of journalism at the U. of Oregon in Eugene. Yet, for five years, Tizon had struggled to write the most important story of his life—the story of Lola, the woman he would call his family’s slave.
Finally, in March, Tizon finished a nearly final draft of the piece. Later that month, his editors at the Atlantic decided to run it as a cover story. Tizon died unexpectedly that day, before they had a chance to tell him of their decision.
Tomas Alexander Asuncion Tizon, MA ’86, died March 23 in Eugene, Ore., of natural causes. He was 57.
Tizon was born in Manila, Philippines, on October 30, 1959, and moved to the United States with his family in 1964. He earned a BA in political science from the University of Oregon and a master’s in journalism from Stanford before joining the Seattle Times.
In 1997, Tizon shared the Pulitzer for investigative reporting with two other Seattle Times writers for their exposé of how reduced governmental oversight of federally sponsored Native American housing programs opened the door to widespread corruption. In 2003, he became the Seattle bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times, a position he would hold until 2008. He spent the next few years working on his memoir, accepting a teaching position at the University of Oregon in 2011.
Tizon was renowned by editors and readers alike for his sensitivity and his ability to find and appreciate a person’s story.
“I feel like Alex’s approach to journalism was to examine life for all of its beauty and all of its cruelty, and write stories that reflected the complexity of both,” says Lisa Heyamoto, a senior instructor of journalism at the University of Oregon.
Tizon’s final story, “My Family’s Slave,” told the story of Eudocia Tomas Pulido, who, in Tizon’s words, was “the woman who had spent 56 years as a slave in my family’s household.” The story went viral and triggered many complicated discussions about slavery—and the meaning of that word—in the modern world.
Tizon is survived by his wife, Melissa; their daughter, Maya; his daughter from a previous marriage, Dylan; two brothers; and two sisters.
Jack Herrera, ’18, is an intern at Stanford.
