Baring her soul while ignoring the trolls
Writer, editor creating a buzz with her new essay collection
Scaachi Koul didn’t set out to write One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter.
She began working on her personal essay collection two years ago, at age 24, intending the book — which she refers to as “a catalog of misery” — to be a much lighter read. But when Koul’s editors at Doubleday Canada pushed her to dig deeper into her “garbage soul,” the underlying tenor of the book shifted.
“It’s a lot about loneliness and trying to make a connection, and it’s a lot about how your history informs where you’re going,” Koul says. “I’m happy where it went, but sometimes you do need an editor to tell you that you don’t have to be glib all the time. That was a hard lesson for me.”
Those who follow Koul’s work as an editor at BuzzFeed or on Twitter know that she’s an all-caps force who doesn’t suffer fools or anonymous online trolls gladly. The sly, cutting sarcasm — and the misery — still reverberate through One Day We’ll All Be Dead, but they’ve been tempered, leaving breathing room for Koul to share more vulnerable observations of her life and her roles as a young woman, a girlfriend, a best pal and a daughter of Indian immigrants. She wrestles with Western beauty standards and ethnic stereotypes, and the horrifying reality of rape and surveillance culture.
“It’s much easier to write down an anxiety or a fear you have, but then cut the tension with a joke. There are portions of the book where I didn’t do that. People were telling me sometimes you have to let amoment land,” says Koul, who describes the feeling of releasing the book as being akin to photocopying your diary and handing it to a gang of junior-high girls.
“As much as my instincts were telling me to say, ‘Here’s a terrible thing that happened, but don’t worry, everything’s fine,’ that’s not always the right move. Writing generally is an exercise in being insecure. Of course, it feels uncomfortable and exposing.”
Koul also didn’t anticipate that her relationship with her family would become the heart of the book. Each chapter opens with an email exchange with her father. Although Koul talks about how she’s inherited her parents’ anxieties and the disconnect she feels as a child of immigrants, there’s a universal quality to her interactions with her family reminiscent of American humorist David Sedaris, whose writing she loved from a young age.
“I’m sure there’s stuff that will make them uncomfortable reading it,” Koul says. “I don’t think my dad wants to read a chapter about my pubic hair, so I won’t recommend it. My mom will read it and she’ll cry, but she’ll get over it.”
One group that Koul isn’t worried about is the online trolls who have been harassing her for the past few years. In One Day We’ll All Be Dead she covers the personal toll the threats have caused but says she doesn’t expect that they’ll actually make an effort to buy her book.
“There’s a fee to enter. With the Internet you can yell at me and it costs you nothing and so that’s where they live,” she says. “I’m not super-concerned and honestly, at this point, I don’t know what they can say that I haven’t heard already. Do your best. What can you say at this point to take this away from me?” Sue Carter is the editor of Quill and Quire. While Scaachi Koul may be known for her brash Twitter takes, her talent as a long-form writer shines in her first book, One Day We’ll All Be Dead And None Of This Will Matter. She covers impressive ground in this collection of essays, spanning subjects such as body image, shadism, online harassment and rape culture — to name just a few.
The Calgary-born, Toronto-based writer is a senior editor at Buzzfeed, whose work has been featured in the New Yorker, the Guardian, Hazlitt, Flare and more, is also a frequent media commentator on issues of diversity and inclusion.
Koul kicks off with a piece entitled “Inheritance Tax” — a hilarious overview of intergenerational anxiety that translates into a fear of dying. Here, she introduces readers to three central characters: her fearless boyfriend (nicknamed ‘Hamhock’) and her overprotective parents, the two sides of this equation often representing the cultural gulf she navigates as a second generation Indo-Canadian.
Koul’s essay about travelling to India for her cousin’s wedding provides sharp insight on how this plays out for her. “If Indian weddings are for Indian people the furthest thing from ‘fun,’ trips to India are the furthest thing from vacation,” she writes. For her, the trip is a bit of an identity crisis, as she watches the rituals she understands, but sometimes feels disconnected from. “Fitting in is a luxury rarely given to immigrants and children of immigrants,” Koul writes. “We are stuck in emotional purgatory. Home, somehow, is the last place you left, and never the place you’re in.”
This is the underlying tension she explores in many of her essays, diving deep by addressing how this has shaped her; for instance, her instinctive delight at having a biracial niece who can pass as white: “I was eighteen when she was born and objectively knew whiteness wasn’t better, and yet, weren’t we lucky to have a little white girl whose life would never resemble our own?”
It’s these nuanced moments in her writing that allow a reader to uncover the real impact of growing up in a place where you are interpreted as automatically outside the mainstream. In writing honestly about incredibly intimate moments, Koul reaches two distinct audiences: those who can’t imagine what her life is like and are given a glimpse into it, and those like her, who will likely feel relief to see themselves reflected in a piece of culture that is sharp, witty and just plain fun to read. Sadiya Ansari is an associate editor at Chatelaine.
“Writing generally is an exercise in being insecure. Of course, it feels uncomfortable and exposing.” SCAACHI KOUL She covers impressive ground in this collection of essays, spanning subjects such as body image, online harassment and rape culture — to name just a few