One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter by Scaachi Koul

I’m not palatable on TV - I’m actively not palatable on TV. You’ve recognized how being light-skinned has benefited you.

What will happen when nobody in this family remembers what this particular holiday is for? I think in a lot of brown families it’s the mom who is the one that calls and says, “It’s rakhi, you need to send your brother a red thread and a card” and you’re like,”Whatever, fine.” And eventually that call will not be made, and I’m curious about who will maintain all of this and who will maintain it after I’m gone too, which goes back to thing about, “Oh, I’m dying.”Īround brown people you’re interpreted as very fair and around white people you’re very brown. I think far more about the implications of fairer skin, and about what happened to my parents’ customs and their parents’ customs. She has an Indian name and there are features about her where I can see my mom, but she has blue eyes and very fair skin and she’s being raised in the prairies. How has she changed how you look at identity, especially looking into the next generation? You write about your niece, who is bi-racial, and the way she’s impacted your thinking about race. Part of it is a mental health question: Where does mental health come from? Who do you inherit your mental health issues from? My dad is a pretty anxious person, and I think I spent too much time with him. Why do you think you’ve carried it with you? Because it seems fortuitous that you make it here and then you end up middle class, so you think we’re all going to die, because there’s really no other option. Maybe part of it is when they were immigrating they dodged so many risks and challenges that they think something’s going to get them. I don’t know if that anxiety is because of where they came from, I think it’s who they are. I totally relate to that, but I always marvel at the fact that they come from countries where conditions actually threatened their lives, and moved to a place that’s comparatively sterile. You start your book by talking about an irrational fear of dying that comes from your parents. She spoke with Chatelaine about inheriting her Dad’s anxiety, the nefarious power of men who ogle women and why some people think she should be fired. Koul, who has also written for the Hairpin, the New Yorker and Flare, debuts her collection of essays March 7, covering everything from the problem with Indian hair to rape culture. The experience shook her, s o naturally, she wrote an essay about it in her first book, One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter.

It was a tweet the senior editor at Buzzfeed wrote in late 2015 soliciting pitches from writers who were “not white and not male” that incited the Internet’s most terrifying behaviour, including threats to rape and kill her. Scaachi Koul’s public persona consists of two things - long, thoughtful essays and sharp, shouty tweets.

One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter by Scaachi Koul