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Toon 17 van 17
This was delightfully funny and surprisingly heartfelt. The writer teckles some pretty serious themes like sexual assault , race , gender dynamics and cultural difference.
 
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Sadia_Baksh05 | 17 andere besprekingen | Sep 11, 2022 |
***after rereading my own review***
After waiting a while and rereading my won review I don't feel any different. But it does feel like I veered off topic. This book very much invites you to. To talk about what you just read. To question what the writer meant. It doesn't always end in heavy conversations. But it certainly can start them.

***Initial review***
Partner: "Why does she keep talking about white people?"
Me: "... I can't even imagine where to start with that explanation."

This was such an uncomfortable read at times. It made me think about my own place in my culture. In my family. In the world. As a person. As a woman. As a child of two cultures.

But it was a good read. One of the best I had this year.

It made me cry. It made me angry. It made me laugh. It started uncomfortable conversations with my partner who didn't understand my reactions. It made me adore him even more. It made me angry at him for not understanding. It made me feel.

I feel like I learned something about a culture not my own while shaking my head because it felt so foreign.

I would recommend this to everyone but I do think not everyone would get something out of it like I did. The reason why would be part of the conversation about why she keeps talking that way about white people.
You either get it or you don't. And when you get it... Keep talking to other people who get it. You're not alone.
If you don't get it. Keep asking questions. And try to remove your own personal experiences from the conversation.

Scaachi Koul gets it. But even better, she tries to explain.
 
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Jonesy_now | 17 andere besprekingen | Sep 24, 2021 |
audiobook read by author (with quotes added by her father) biographical essays and observations from Canadian-born daughter of Indian immigrants

it seems like a lot of people had trouble relating to this author's experiences, but that's sort of the point. There is no "one experience" for all brown people, just as there's not one experience for all Canadians or Americans. The point is to get more of these diverse voices out there so that people can be more aware of this fact, and to help us build empathy with folks whose cultures are unfamiliar.

I strongly recommend the audio version; she's funny and it probably sets the tone better than the print version.

I did find the essay where she talks about "party culture" and getting roofied multiple times on different occasions to be eye-opening and important (horrifying, really), especially in light of current events. I would make every teen girl read it (and probably all genders, followed by an open discussion about consent, alcoholism, and alcohol-induced blackouts) if it would keep everyone safer.
 
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reader1009 | 17 andere besprekingen | Jul 3, 2021 |
Sometimes hilarious (often including Indian family dynamics); sometimes delving into the horrible (rape culture). In the audio version, the author's dad speaks his own parts.
 
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joyblue | 17 andere besprekingen | Mar 22, 2020 |
A collection of essays from a Canadian journalist at Buzzfeed in which she reflects on the experience of being the child of immigrants, finding her way between two cultures, the experience of being brown, and her experiences as a woman. Funny and scathing, Koul is an intriguing voice.
 
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MickyFine | 17 andere besprekingen | May 1, 2019 |
(I am so far behind in reviews. I have so many to do and, as the three readers of my blog have noticed, I stopped doing anything about that months ago and *sigh*. Then, instead of writing the reviews, I just go straight to my dealer, i.e. Netgalley, and request more books and then the publishers on Netgalley give them to me. Why have you not cut me off, Netgalley? Plus I buy books and go to the library and I am totally going to die by being crushed by the huge piles of unread books I have all around my house. And, of course, the books from Netgalley expire, so then I take them out of the library and review them because I can't let some multinational publishing conglomerate down. Plus the new Wordpress editing system annoys me because I hate change. If I were a true reviewer, I'd make a plan to review at least 52 books this year, or something. But no, I'll just go to the bookstore, then the library, then Netgalley and add to my unread pile so that, when crushed, it will take an excavator to dig my mummified corpse free.)

I decided, before opening the book, that I was going to dislike One day we'll all be dead and none of this will matter by Scaachi Koul.
I based this on the following reasons:


  1. she is younger than me;

  2. she is more successful than me; and

  3. I read a similar book a few years ago and found the narrator insufferable and idiotic;



Then I opened Koul's book and was annoyed with myself because it was good and amusing at times and heart-rending at others and dammit why are people more talented than me? How is that fair? And I shouldn't prejudge books. I learned my lesson (although I reserve the right to prejudge any books with side-boobs on the cover).

Essays on being female, being Canadian, being first-generation, having boyfriends, having friends, people who are jerks, etc. Depth but not smothering (like how my piles of books are going to smother me if they don't shatter all my bones first). I enjoyed reading it.

One day we'll all be dead and none of this will matter by Scaachi Koul went on sale March 7, 2017.
I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
 
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reluctantm | 17 andere besprekingen | Jan 7, 2019 |
This essay collection is dryly funny, while taking on issues of culture, gender, and class. The fact that she refers to her boyfriend as Hamhock throughout the book is my favorite.
 
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KimMeyer | 17 andere besprekingen | Oct 1, 2018 |
One Day We'll All Be Dead And None of This Will Matter🍒🍒🍒🍒
By Scaachi Koul
2017
Picador Books
ISBN 978-1-250-12102

I really enjoyed the honesty and hilarity of the essays in this volume. Her humor and phrases are spot on, and so immediately relate - able. Growing up with a strict conservative family, being modern was only the first of her problems, wearing large size clothes and preferring white boys only fueled the fire. This is laugh out loud funny. Loved it. Definitely would recommend to anyone who enjoys humorous essays.
 
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over.the.edge | 17 andere besprekingen | Sep 18, 2018 |
I needed to younger to relate to this series of short stories about being the child of Indian immigrants to Canada. There were plenty of funny stories and it was interesting listening to her interactions with her south Asian culture, but I wasn’t pulled into the story.
 
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brangwinn | 17 andere besprekingen | Jul 7, 2018 |
I’d been salivating over this book for a while, ever since I’d seen it on multiple lists last year of forthcoming books. A month ago I thought it was out but realized that was just in Canada and not the U.S. Found it on Netgalley and finally was able to read it after begging the publisher to approve me on Twitter. :D

Scaachi Koul is a Buzzfeed writer who’s probably best-known for when she put out a request on Twitter for non-white writers and started a completely undeserved shitstorm. The very people who often disparagingly call liberals “special snowflakes” lost their freakin’ minds. Anyway, before I go off on that tangent (and she talks about this whole episode in her life in the book)...

Koul is the child of Indian parents, specifically parents from the Kashmir region of India, so that’s another reason I wanted to read this: I’m really interested in reading writing of people with whom I can identify, even a little bit.

In that, the book didn’t disappoint. The struggles of an immigrant or the child of immigrants are uphill, especially when you’re younger, and Koul really gets into that, throughout multiple essays. One thing that I think a lot of brown people who grew up here can identify with is this particular line: “I tried to force myself out of brownness at her age, but the older I get, the more I tuck myself into it.” When you’re younger, you try to separate yourself from your culture to fit in (despite all the shit you face from your parents for doing so), but as you grow older you realize what a mistake that was.
Fitting is a luxury rarely given to immigrants, or the children of immigrants. We are stuck in emotional purgatory. Home, somehow, is always the last place you left, and never the place you’re in.
Some of the strongest parts of the book were when she talked about her parents: their experiences as immigrants, their relationship with her, their perceptions as people living away from their homeland. I saw a lot of my parents reflected in her parents, and it made me consider them in ways that I probably hadn’t enough thought to before. This line especially resonated:
So much of immigration is about loss. First you lose bodies: people who die, people whose deaths you missed. Then you lose history: no one speaks the language anymore, and successive generations grow more and more westernized. Then you lose memory: throughout this trip, I tried to place people, where I had met them, how I knew them. I can’t remember anything anymore.
Her experience of returning to a place in India as an adult that she’d previously visited only as a kid could have been me doing the same thing in my life. Knowing that others have these same feelings and experiences, and reading about them, is so validating. I’m so glad that voices like Koul’s have a place now in mainstream culture. You don’t think about it actively, but it’s like all the arguments being made for having more than just white people on TV and in movies: Representation matters.

The essay on rape culture, Hunting Season, was another stunning, strong piece. I’d actually read it before on Buzzfeed (which leads me to believe that much of the book may be from pieces she’s already written online), but it can certainly be read over and over and shared with everyone you know. Her insights on how men watch women are so on point.
Surveillance feeds into rape culture more than drinking ever could. It’s the part of male entitlement that makes them believe they’re owed something if they pay enough attention to you, monitor how you’re behaving to see if you seem loose and friendly enough to accommodate a conversation with a man you’ve never met. He’s not a rapist. No, he’s just offering to buy you a beer, and a shot, and a beer, and another beer, he just wants you to have a really good time. He wants you to lose the language of being able to consent. He’s drunk too, but of course, you’re not watching him like he’s watching you.
And of course, the aforementioned chapter on the disgusting harassment she faced on Twitter was another fantastic essay. I highlighted the hell out of that section but I’ll leave just this one quote here:
But all things built by humans descend into the same pitfalls: loathing, vitriol, malicious intent. All the things we build in order to communicate, to connect, to find people like us so we feel less alone, and to find people not like us at all so we learn how to adapt, end up turning against us.
Basically, throughout most of this book, I would sigh softly and highlight something and reflect on what I’d just read. There were definitely things that Koul writes that I disagree with but hers is an interesting, and often hilarious, perspective to read. I’ve been shouting about this book to everyone, even before I finished it, and I already know a couple people I’ll be buying it for. Highly recommended.

Note: I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
 
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preetalina | 17 andere besprekingen | Jan 16, 2018 |
I first heard about Scaachi Koul's One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter several months ago on BookTube (I will continue to sing its praises) and added it to my TRL as I felt the need to read more Canadian authors. This book is a collection of essays about Scaachi's life growing up as a child of Indian immigrants in Canada. There's a focus on body positivity, feminism, and the endemic racism she and other people of color face in that country. She discusses her family and how she is the direct product of two disparate parenting philosophies. (Each chapter begins with an email conversation between herself and her father. He's quite possibly the funniest man on planet earth.) She's deeply afraid of going outside of her comfort zone and yet she's in a relationship with a man who seems to do nothing but push her to do just that. (I thought I had travel anxiety until I read about her experiences flying.) It's a look into a family as different and yet somehow the same as mine or yours. There's always going to be some neuroses in any family. It's about self-discovery, self-love, and ultimately self-acceptance. It was a lot of fun but judging from the fact that I had to refresh my memory by looking up the blurb it isn't the most memorable book I've had the pleasure of reading this year. So I'm gonna give it a 6/10.
 
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AliceaP | 17 andere besprekingen | Sep 15, 2017 |
Best for: People who enjoy strong, witty writers who are able to handle fluffy and serious topics with equal finesse.

In a nutshell: Scaachi Koul shares some snipets of her life as the child of Indian immigrant now living in Canada.

Line that sticks with me: “It changes you, when you see someone similar to you, doing the thing you might want to do yourself.” (p 123)

Why I chose it: Because Lindy West, Jessica Valenti and Samantha Irby can’t all be wrong.

Review: I’d seen this book in my local bookstore a bunch of times and always walked past it because I thought it was a much more serious book. I didn’t fully process that the title was more of a joke than some clever way of of being hopeful (I’ve got the cover uploaded here so hopefully you see what I mean); that’s on me. Then I finally picked it up and flipped it over, and three of my favorite authors — and just generally awesome women — provided the blurbs. So obviously I purchased it immediately.

This is a collection of loosely connected essays in which Ms. Koul shares her perspective as a woman whose parents immigrated to Canada from India before she was born. She talks about body issues (the chapter on body hair is amazing), about being lighter skinned than other Indians. She talks about online harassment and rape culture.

I enjoyed Ms. Koul’s style of writing and her wit. Not everything is a laugh out loud joke, and some parts and extremely serious, but the book never feels heavy in a bad way. She somehow makes challenging topics feel manageable, if that makes sense. I’m so happy I got this book, and look forward to reading more from her.
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ASKelmore | 17 andere besprekingen | Jul 8, 2017 |
Koul blends humor and hard-hitting truths amazingly well. Her essay "Mute" resonated deeply with me and I hope this is the first of what will be many books she'll publish.
 
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Kristymk18 | 17 andere besprekingen | Jul 3, 2017 |
Hilarious look at what growing up South Asian is like! I found it relatable even though I am not South Asian.½
 
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wildrequiem | 17 andere besprekingen | Jun 14, 2017 |
Maybe it's because I'm bi racial and from the Canadian prairies but this book really spoke to me. In these essays there are poignant notes of casual racism, growing up other, and being othered. There are moments of pure feminism, and social justice. The chapter on the culture of surveillance spoke to my 20's in ways I can't explain. Brown girl hair problems both real and imagined made me laugh quite literally out loud. The internet in Canada before twitter was my teen years. A truly wonderful book.
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SadieRuin | 17 andere besprekingen | May 4, 2017 |
I was hooked from the get go. Having just read Shrill and other memoirs by Jenny Lawson, Mindy Kaling, etc. this was the perfect fit for me. This memoir by Scaachi Koul, a first generation Indian immigrant living in Canada was heartfelt, hilarious, and impossible to put down. I read it in less than a day. I especially loved the stories about her parents and her zany yet loving, upbringing. I grew up close to a loving Indian family so I know a smidge about their culture, food, and festivals and Koul's stories took me back. Koul also talks about hard subjects like: rape, alcoholism, gender bias, growing up ethnic in a white neighborhood, and struggling with body image. Each chapter is filled with wit, wisdom, and lil' nuggets that will get you thinking. Definitely keeping around for a re-read.
 
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ecataldi | 17 andere besprekingen | Apr 15, 2017 |
Toon 17 van 17