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WORK TITLE: One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://scaachi.com/
CITY:
STATE:
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NATIONALITY:
http://www.elle.com/culture/books/interviews/a45221/scaachi-koul-book-interview/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer. BuzzFeed, culture writer.
WRITINGS
Contributor to periodicals, including New Yorker, the New York Times, the Toronto Globe and Mail, the Walrus, Hazzlitt, Jezebel, Maisonneuve, Motherboard, and Flare.
SIDELIGHTS
Scaachi Koul is a Canadian writer. Born in Calgary, she eventually becoming a culture writer for BuzzFeed. Koul has also published articles in the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Toronto Globe and Mail, the Walrus, Hazzlitt, Jezebel, Maisonneuve, Motherboard, and Flare.
Koul published the essay collection One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter in 2017. The essays cover a range of issues as experienced from the lens of a first-generation Canadian with Indian parents. Koul discusses her travels in India and her lack of a sense of belonging, as well as cultural traditions and stereotypes. Koul writes on sexism, race, rape culture, and body issues, and shares her personal experiences dealing with these issues and confronting Internet trolls.
In an interview in Elle, Koul talked with Jaya Saxena about directing her collection of essays to women of color, noting that she wanted to offer another representation from her own experiences. Koul specifically lamented about the representation of Indians in the media, recalling that when these representations are “reflected back to you, it’s dumb. It’s cartoony or fake, and insulting sometimes. When I was a kid, I felt so proud that Apu was a brown person on The Simpsons, and you grow up and realize that whole thing sucks. It’s offensive and obnoxious, and it’s turned half my upbringing into white people screaming Apu jokes at me.”
Booklist contributor Annie Bostrom claimed that “Koul will inform and entertain both those who already identify with her and those who don’t yet.” A contributor to Publishers Weekly noted that “the specifics of Koul’s life are unique, but the overarching theme of inheritance is universal.” The same Publishers Weekly reviewer remarked that “Koul’s deft humor is a fringe benefit.” A Kirkus Reviews contributor recalled Koul’s Twitter comments and the threatening replies she received, insisting that “it’s a terrifying story, but Koul’s conclusions are less reflective than understandably defensive.” The Kirkus Reviews contributor concluded by calling the collection “an uneven introduction to an iconoclast whose voice will likely resonate with a specific generation.”
Writing in Elle, Saxena explained that, in reading about the various topics that Koul discusses in her collection, “the thread that ties these experiences together is her Indian-ness. It’s what makes her struggles with body hair all the more loaded. It’s what makes her relationships with white people more difficult to navigate. It just makes her experiences, well, different.” Saxena appened: “At least that’s what I, a mixed-race Indian-American woman, see in it. It’s not like women haven’t grappled with rape culture and family dynamics in essay form before, but there’s something about Koul’s writing that, while universal, also feels like it’s specifically for me. It centers the brown woman’s experience. Yes, these are experiences that everyone has, but this is how they happen for women like her.”
In a review in Quill & Quire, Becky Robertson opined that the essays read “as a collection of life stories told by a friend. This is in no way a shortcoming: it is in her personal stories that Koul’s humour and insight really shine.” Reviewing the collection in Literary Hub, Garnette Cadogan stated: “I look forward to encountering her sharp eye and hilarious side-eye.” In a review in Village Voice, Hannah Gold lauded that Koul’s “deft voice … is unmistakable, or at least will be soon.” Writing in the Toronto Globe and Mail, Zarqa Nawaz mentioned that “Koul does a deft job of tackling both racism and the patriarchy, but her most powerful writing discusses the rape and surveillance culture that’s become so prevalent in our society.” Nawaz also found that “her musings on how ‘our inability to talk about race and its complexities actually means our racism is arguably more insidious’ become almost prophetic in the era of Donald Trump. Shadism has coloured Koul’s entire life.” Nawaz summarized that Koul “weaves stories, which through their cultural uniqueness and specificity, become universal and applicable to all.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, April 1, 2017, Annie Bostrom, review of One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter, p. 13.
Elle, May 12, 2017, Jaya Saxena, “Scaachi Koul Wants to Make the Culture She Never Had.”
Globe and Mail (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), April 14, 2017, Zarqa Nawaz, review of One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter.
Kirkus Reviews, March 1, 2017, review of One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter.
Publishers Weekly, March 13, 2017, review of One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter, p. 74.
Quill & Quire, May 1, 2017, Becky Robertson, review of One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter.
Village Voice, March 29, 2017, Hannah Gold, review of One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter.
ONLINE
Literary Hub, http://lithub.com/ (May 1, 2017), Garnette Cadogan, review of One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter.
Scaachi Koul Website, http://scaachi.com (November 7, 2017).*
Scaachi Koul Wants to Make the Culture She Never Had
The author of One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter talks about Indian-Canadian womanhood.
BY JAYA SAXENA
MAY 12, 2017
Scaachi Koul is wearing leggings patterned with the face of an Indian woman. The repeating white face and black hair bears flashes of red from a bindi and the sindoor powder along her part. "Indian women on the street are like, hey, I know that woman on your butt," says Koul, smiling. Then she starts making fun of Dunkin' Donuts. She doesn't get why Americans are so obsessed with it. (She spends a lot of time making fun of Americans, and also making fun of Canadians.)
Koul's recently released book of essays, One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter, covers a lot of topics: womanhood, body image, growing up in Canada and on the internet, love, family. But the thread that ties these experiences together is her Indian-ness. It's what makes her struggles with body hair all the more loaded. It's what makes her relationships with white people more difficult to navigate. It just makes her experiences, well, different.
At least that's what I, a mixed-race Indian-American woman, see in it. It's not like women haven't grappled with rape culture and family dynamics in essay form before, but there's something about Koul's writing that, while universal, also feels like it's specifically for me. It centers the brown woman's experience. Yes, these are experiences that everyone has, but this is how they happen for women like her. And that's exactly what she meant to do.
Scaachi Koul
Scaachi Koul
At your Greenlight Bookstore event, a cabal of brown girls showed up asking you for life advice. It was amazing. Does that happen to you often?
They come all the time. They come and they want advice, or an answer, and half the time I'm like, "I just don't have one! I don't know what's going to happen with you and your parents. I don't know if you're going to get disowned." It makes me sad, because it tells me just how little they get spoken to.
You said at that event that you wrote this book for brown girls. What do you think it is about the Indian-American or Indian-Canadian experience that's so hard for girls to navigate, or to live authentically in?
Women are reflected in media. Whether you like it or not, there's something shown back at you. And we're at a point right now where that's happening with South Asian artists. Riz Ahmed is some hot teen that everybody's horny for. Mindy's still got her show. Aziz has his show. It's kind of starting, but there isn't [so much] in the culture that speaks back to you. I couldn't think of anything from when I was younger, certainly.
One Day We'll All Be Dead And None Of This Will Matter
I feel like I watched 'The Jungle Book,' that's it.
Right! I remember watching that too and feeling like, "Ahhh!" But that's what I mean, when it is reflected back to you, it's dumb. It's cartoony or fake, and insulting sometimes. When I was a kid, I felt so proud that Apu was a brown person on The Simpsons, and you grow up and realize that whole thing sucks. It's offensive and obnoxious, and it's turned half my upbringing into white people screaming Apu jokes at me.
So these girls come to these events because there's nothing else, and at least I'm visible, and they want to know, How do I get there? And, God...it's luck? I hate myself a lot, I drink too much—these are never the answers they want. But I get that. They'll come to me after and give me these details, and I feel a responsibility towards them. I don't want to leave them in the lurch, but I can't solve this. If I could, I would. I'm doing what I can by showing up and being there, but at a certain point, isn't it shitty that there are, like, five of us doing all this work?
It seems like people still can't grok a brown woman's narrative. People either latch on to the brownness or the womanness, and don't necessarily realize that for brown women you can't have one without the other. Have you experienced that in people's reactions to your book?
It's really difficult, and for the chapter about body hair I thought about this a lot. With hair, it's either something we talk about from a racial perspective or from a gender perspective, and it's different when we put the two together. Racially, it happens in different ways, too. Brown women get to have beautiful, admired hair—but on their heads, nowhere else. And black women just can't have hair? Nobody wants to let them do anything.
But part of it too is that the people who interview me tend to be white, because the media is white. I get a lot of women, but they're not sure how to talk about it. Actually, this may be more true with white male interviewers, but they seem scared to talk about my race, like it's a secret.
It's like they're worried they're going to say something weird about it.
But them being uncomfortable about it is worse. The other side of it is when people want to talk to me about the internet, and abuse on the internet. They only talk to me about it like, "As a woman it must be hard," and I'm like, Well...there's lots of reasons why it's challenging. And I'm getting off relatively lightly: I'm straight, I'm pretty middle class, I'm in a position with my job where I could just stop dealing with it, and not everybody gets to do that. But my brownness sometimes plays as big a role as my gender does, and it's complicated. That's not a pass—I'm not happy about it, but people just don't know how to talk about it. You're the first person who's asked me that.
I DON'T GET TO COMPLAIN FOR JUST ME.... I HAVE TO TALK FOR A LITERAL BILLION OF US.
You also have that caveat of "other people have it worse," when you've had it really bad with harassment online! Why do you think you play that experience down?
I don't think I'm doing that, but it's worth acknowledging that there are levels to these experiences. People get mad at me when I call Canada bad. It's not great! But people ask what I'm mad about, because we have free health insurance and our hot, dumb president. It would be easy for me to say I'm comfortable. But saying that is dismissive. The abuse I get is bad, but it's the tip of an iceberg that gets bigger.
This is why I complain so much. I don't get to complain for just me. I have to talk for a literal billion of us, because there aren't enough of us who get to speak out.
I've noticed that brown women who don't really love the book leave reviews online saying, "I'm just glad this exists." I would love for us to be at a place where you could tell me you think it sucks because there's so much else around, but there isn't.
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There's this great line in your essay "Fair and Lovely," where you say you used to not wear gold jewelry because it made you feel marked as an Other, and now you wear it as "a signal to other Others that I'm an other too." How did that shift happen?
I was in a position where I could arguably not acknowledge that part of my identity. I'm not that dark skinned. I could dye my hair and pluck my eyebrows and change the way I do my makeup, I could obscure it. But I got to a point where I realized I don't want to do that. I'm very stubborn, and I don't like the idea of running away from things that I feel are mine. By the time I was in my early twenties, I thought, Why do I not get to engage with these things because other people are uncomfortable with it?
There is something oddly comforting about [being recognized as part of a culture]. I'm not from anywhere: I'm not Indian by birth, or by anything beyond my parents' race. I was born in Calgary, but I hated it, so I'm not living there. If I don't feel like I'm from any of these places, I might as well try to own little bits of identity with how I present myself.
Have you had an experience before of not wanting Indian things until white people started using them? Because I definitely got excited about those chandelier earrings once they showed up on white celebrities, even though I already had them, and I'm so angry about that.
I'D LIKE TO CURATE WHO GETS TO REFLECT MY IMAGE BACK TO ME.
I did Indian dancing, and you wear big jewelry, and one of the pieces I had was five rings that connected to a bracelet. And I remember thinking it was hideous and ridiculous at the time. But I started liking the idea of it because H&M started making something like it. I was like, "That's so cute! Why is it familiar?" And I talked to my partner about it when I got home, and he goes into my jewelry box and he's like, "This? This thing that your mother gave you 15 years ago?" It's maddening. On some level, you're just happy to be seen by anybody. And then you're like, no, I'd like to curate who gets to reflect my image back to me.
So, you wrote about the ridiculousness of Indian weddings, and now you're engaged. Are you having one?
Yeah. Maybe that'll be book two! Honestly, I have very little autonomy in this process, as I wrote in the book. We thought we had a date, and I told my mom, and she flipped out because it's a holiday. Like, what holiday? She just invented some Indian holiday where we can't eat meat.
Interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Hi, I’m Scaachi Koul. Here’s an explainer on how to pronounce it.
I’m a Culture Writer for BuzzFeed and my debut collection of essays, One Day We’ll All Be Dead And None Of This Will Matter, is out now. Buy it, please.
One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This
Will Matter
Annie Bostrom
Booklist.
113.15 (Apr. 1, 2017): p13.
COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter.
By Scaachi Koul.
May 2017. 256p. Picador, paper, $16 (9781250121028). 814.
Koul, a senior staffer at Buzzfeed Canada who's written for the New Yorker and Jezebel, was raised in Alberta by
Kashmiri immigrant parents, and her first book of essays is inherently influenced by this fact of her existence. As an
adult in her family's ancestral land, she understands shadism--the not-oft-discussed prejudice based on the darkness of
one's brown skin--differently and more uncomfortably than before. A recent month off drinking recalls a college bestfriendship
derailed by her friend's knack for fun becoming full-blown alcoholism before her eyes. Unveiling the double
standards that exist for her both as a woman in her family (moving in with her much-older boyfriend prompts months
of anger from her father) and a woman of color in the world, Koul is funny and generous in sharing, and blissfully not
in the business of cutting slack. Her most emotional writing centers on her simultaneously infuriating, difficult, and
fiercely loving parents. Like all great essayists, Koul will inform and entertain both those who already identify with her
and those who don't yet.--Annie Bostrom
Bostrom, Annie
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Bostrom, Annie. "One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter." Booklist, 1 Apr. 2017, p. 13. General
OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA491487834&it=r&asid=c5f464ea4d274de30389acc7e39fa072.
Accessed 22 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A491487834
10/22/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1508693780094 2/3
One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This
Will Matter
Publishers Weekly.
264.11 (Mar. 13, 2017): p74.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
* One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter
Scaachi Koul. Picador, $16 trade paper (256p) ISBN 978-1-250-12102-8
Simultaneously uproarious and affecting, the personal essays in Buzzfeed contributor Koul's debut explore the nuances
of life as a first-generation Canadian with Indian parents, from phobias, guilt trips, and grudges to the drama of
interracial dating. She provides insight into the experience of traveling to her parents' homeland, undergoing the inverse
of their assimilation, and the conflicting desire to maintain and amend cultural traditions (for example, she dislikes
weeklong wedding celebrations with alcohol restrictions). She discerns the "shadism" of India's caste system and its
more benign cultural quirks, like every woman being given the title of "aunt" ("Mom, why do you have forty sisters?
Was your mother a sea turtle?"). There is an occasional essay of sheer slapstick, as when Koul describes getting stuck
inside a coveted garment in a boutique dressing room ("I flew too close, to the sun with this skirt," she remarks sadly),
but she also reflects poignantly on race, sexism, and body image issues. She includes a surprisingly sympathetic
judgment of misogynist internet trolls and a polemic against rape culture that contains the unfortunate phrase "the first
time I was roofied." The specifics of Koul's life are unique, but the overarching theme of inheritance is universal,
particularly the vacillation between struggling against becoming one's parents and the begrudging acceptance that their
ways might not be so bad. Koul's deft humor is a fringe benefit. Agent: Ron Eckel, Cooke Agency. (May)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter." Publishers Weekly, 13 Mar. 2017, p. 74. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA485971682&it=r&asid=f8ac9126913038a09a0f6a9556837b06.
Accessed 22 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A485971682
10/22/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1508693780094 3/3
Koul, Scaachi: ONE DAY WE'LL ALL BE
DEAD AND NONE OF THIS WILL MATTER
Kirkus Reviews.
(Mar. 1, 2017):
COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Koul, Scaachi ONE DAY WE'LL ALL BE DEAD AND NONE OF THIS WILL MATTER Picador (Adult Nonfiction)
$16.00 5, 2 ISBN: 978-1-250-12102-8
A debut collection of essays by a BuzzFeed Canada senior writer.Canadian journalist Koul writes about all manner of
things, ranging from her family's Indian culture to race and gender issues. Her essays are sporadically funny and often
touching, but occasionally they feel insubstantial. The opening essay, "Inheritance Tax," is a meditation on fear, family,
and mutual protectiveness. "Size Me Up" is a David Sedaris-esque story about shopping. "If you are a woman reading
this, you know this to be true: the possibility of getting stuck in a garment at a store where the employees have to cut
you out of it is the beginning of the end of your life," writes the author. "It's like the saddest version of a C-section,
where the baby is just a half-naked lady with no dignity." The book is heavily weighted toward stories about Koul's
family--interstitial segments relay wry text messages between the author and her father--and her boyfriend, "Hamhock,"
a "sweet, precious moron." The author occasionally delves into more serious territory, writing about cultural racism in
"Fair and Lovely" and delivering a biting essay on drinking and rape culture in "Hunting Season." The focal point of
the collection is "Mute," an essay that relates the incident for which the author is most well-known, for better or worse.
It details how serial Tweeter Koul managed to enrage the internet into Gamergate-level backlash by stating she would
like to see more articles by nonwhite, nonmale writers, spurring rape and death threats. It's a terrifying story, but Koul's
conclusions are less reflective than understandably defensive. "It's no wonder I keep fighting with riff-raff on the
internet," she writes. "I'm expecting human interaction, and all they're offering are beeps. I was dumb enough to want a
hug from a machine." An uneven introduction to an iconoclast whose voice will likely resonate with a specific
generation.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Koul, Scaachi: ONE DAY WE'LL ALL BE DEAD AND NONE OF THIS WILL MATTER." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Mar.
2017. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA482911673&it=r&asid=ee6b8f327ac2828d002938805b60b295.
Accessed 22 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A482911673