April 2018: One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter

[Reera, Bookmaster]

We are reading our second non-fiction book for Books & Boba in April. We will be reading Scaachi Koul's autobiography and collection of essays, One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter .

Koul is a culture writer for Buzzfeed Canada. In her book, Koul shares personal stories about growing up in Canada as a daughter of Indian immigrants, her observations about life as a woman of color, and her thoughts about how gender dynamics in Indian and Western culture.

As always, we strongly encourage people to share their thoughts here in the forums. Comments really help us determine what direction our discussion should go in.

[Reera, Bookmaster]

Arianna wrote: "excited for this one! I received this book last year in a Book of the Month box and haven't read it yet, yay time to read it!"

Hahaha. I can relate to having unread Book of the Month books on the bookshelf. It took me over a year to crack open Pachinko.

[Rebekah]

This was a beautifully written book. Koul spins word, that draw you into the story. I could see, smell, hear and feel the moments of her life that she brought me into.
In some ways it felt more like a novel being told in essay form, because it was so well written as a coherent story.
But this didn’t make it gentle or romanticized. She had deep and good, but hard and painful things to say about society and what it was like to grow up in between cultures. Definitely made me stop and think.

I loved the cover of the book, with the words marked out...making a cynical thought into a hopeful and meaningful one. I felt like that summarizes the book completely, it is both cynical and hopeful.

By far the best part was the snippets of conversation with her father at the beginning of each chapter. So witty and funny.

Really enjoyed the book!

[Reera, Bookmaster]

As always, I talked about the book in depth on the podcast, but I wanted to share some quick thoughts and some of my favorite quotes. I had a blast reading this book. It was witty, introspective, and offered so much important commentary on what it means to be a child of immigrant parents and a brown woman in North America.

“Immigrant parents, when they first move to North America, push towards whiteness, towards assimilation, to survive and thrive. Naturally, their children do too for the first half of their lives. This usually tips the other way, but before we're taught anything, we're taught to hide.”

One essay that was particularly memorable to me was the "Hunting Ground." I don't think I've ever read an essay that so thoroughly explained how rape culture thrives due to sexual surveillance of women. It was frightening how relatable I found Saachi's run-ins with sexual predators to be, and I'm curious to read what some of our male book club members thought about the essay.

"Rapists exist on a spectrum, and maybe this attentive version is the most dangerous type: women are so used to being watched that we don’t notice when someone’s watching us for the worst reason imaginable. They have a plan long before we even get to the bar to order our first drink."

I also really loved the essay "Aus-piss-ee-ous," in which Koul shares her experience attending her cousin's wedding. There were so many hilarious passages from it, especially the ones featuring her niece, Raisin. I thought it was interesting how Koul notes the paradox of an empowered career woman with a British college education like her cousin choosing to have her spouse arranged and undergo a traditional Indian wedding. Her cousin recognizes the hypocritical and patriarchal nature of an Indian wedding, but she bears it because she actually wants a big traditional wedding and she also understands how important it is to her family. Her choice doesn't make her any less of a feminist or modern woman. I thought Koul did a good job exploring that duality.

“Did I mention Indian weddings last seven days? There are prison sentences that run shorter than Indian weddings.”

I'll close this long post with one final quote that I probably will frame and display in my house. It's from the chapter where Koul talks about her harassment on Twitter after asking for article submissions from non-male, non-white writers.

“I like being present in spaces where I am not welcome because you do not deserve to feel comfortable just because you're racist or sexist or small-minded.”