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

by Scaachi Koul

Overview

One of NPR's Best Books of the Year

A DEBUT COLLECTION OF FIERCE, FUNNY ESSAYS ABOUT GROWING UP THE DAUGHTER OF INDIAN IMMIGRANTS IN WESTERN CULTURE, ADDRESSING SEXISM, STEREOTYPES, AND THE UNIVERSAL MISERIES OF LIFE

In One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter, Scaachi Koul deploys her razor-sharp humor to share all the fears, outrages, and mortifying moments of her life. She learned from an early age what made her miserable, and for Scaachi anything can be cause for despair. Whether it’s a shopping trip gone awry; enduring awkward conversations with her bikini waxer; overcoming her fear of flying while vacationing halfway around the world; dealing with Internet trolls, or navigating the fears and anxieties of her parents. Alongside these personal stories are pointed observations about life as a woman of color: where every aspect of her appearance is open for critique, derision, or outright scorn; where strict gender rules bind in both Western and Indian cultures, leaving little room for a woman not solely focused on marriage and children to have a career (and a life) for herself.

With a sharp eye and biting wit, incomparable rising star and cultural observer Scaachi Koul offers a hilarious, scathing, and honest look at modern life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250121028
Publisher:	Picador
Publication date:	05/02/2017
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	292,035
Product dimensions:	8.10(w) x 5.40(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Scaachi Koul was born and raised in Calgary, Alberta, and is a culture writer for BuzzFeed. Her writing has also appeared in The New Yorker, The Hairpin, The Globe and Mail, and Jezebel. One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter is her first book. She lives in Toronto.

Table of Contents

CONTENTS

Inheritance Tax — 1
Size Me Up — 33
Fair and Lovely — 53
Aus-pee-ee-ous — 77
Mute — 111
A Good Egg — 139
Hunting Season — 163
Mister Beast Man to You, Randor — 175
Tawi River, Elbow River — 195
Anyway — 213

Interviews

The Essay's Not Dead Yet: Scaachi Koul Talks with Jason Diamond

Not every writer would publish a column, as Scaachi Koul did in 2015 for BuzzFeed, containing thirteen "inexplicable yet endearing emails" from her father, among them a missive that states: "It is your sciniltallting [sic] writing replete with ascerbic [sic] wit and condescending disdain for everything under the sun which makes everybody hold you in high esteem."

The truth of that assessment is palpable throughout Koul's book debut, One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter, in which the twenty-six-year-old Canadian essayist, the first-generation daughter of Kashmiri immigrants, takes on weighty subjects — appropriation, patriarchy, racism, sexism, sexuality, rape culture, the immigrant experience, personal identity . . . and her father — with an unsparing eye for human foible and an attitude suffused with sardonic, misanthropic humor.

In another essay last May for BuzzFeed, where she writes regularly about culture, Koul reflected, "I don't know why any of us write; it is a terrible sickness." But her ever-increasing fan base is glad that she does.

On July 6, 2017, Koul discussed the above-stated matters in a lively dialogue with Jason Diamond (author of the memoir Searching for John Hughes, editor at Rollingstone.com, and founder of Volume 1: Brooklyn), before responding to audience questions at the Barnes & Noble branch at Eighty-second Street and Broadway on Manhattan's Upper West Side.

Jason Diamond: You write about having this fear of flying, and yet you've been touring so much. Has it gotten worse?

Scaachi Koul: It's getting worse for sure. It's also getting worse because I have to come to the States a lot, and going through border security as an ethnic with, like, no real reason to be here, is never good. I'm here for a few weeks this trip, so I didn't have a return flight. When I came in they were like, "What do you do?" "Oh, I'm a writer." "Are you?" I could bring up this book I wrote, but they wouldn't trust it.

JD: Do you think they'd like the title?

SK: I do not tell Border Security the title of my book.

JD: How did you come to the title? It's possibly the title of the year.

SK: In the book, there's an essay about going to my cousin's wedding in India. She was having a bad week, because weddings are a week there. She looked at me, really exhausted, and was like, "This is so physically painful and emotionally painful." I said, "It's OK, because you're going to be dead, and then none of this will matter." My aunts didn't love that, but I thought it was apt.

JD: Where did you come up with the idea to write a book of personal essays?

SK: I've got a couple of things in my favor. One is that I'm a narcissist. So right out of the gate, it's like: Cool — ready to talk about myself again. But I'm also good at it. That's just lucky. But the other side of it is, I wanted to write a book that would talk about things I didn't get to read about when I was younger. I didn't read a ton of nonfiction about women when I was younger. I certainly didn't read nonfiction about brown women, and I definitely didn't read about, you know, Canadian brown women pulling hairs out of their nipples — which is a story in this collection. That never really came up for me. I remember thinking how nice would it have been to have had that when I was even twenty; something that gives you a guide of, you know, your life is hell, but it's going to be OK eventually . . . hopefully.

JD: As I was reading, I was thinking that children of immigrants grow up with values from where their parents are from, but their parents also are trying to raise them as a Canadian or an American. At some point you have to rebel. Every kid rebels, but I think it's different when your parents are not from here. I'm wondering at what point you started thinking, "I want to be different than my parents."

SK: Eleven or twelve. Puberty. I think a big part of it was noticing boys. That wasn't a talk I got. No one sat me down and told me, "This is how somebody has a baby." You just sort of figure it out because your mother will never tell you. But I never realized how much access I had to information, compared to the rest of my family. My mom recently told me a story that her mother got married when she was fifteen, before she had her period, and then she got it when she turned sixteen, and her husband had to tell her what it was, because none of the women in her family would tell her. Now I think about my niece, who is the first biracial person in our family. And I marvel at the amount of information she has.

But in terms of feeling different from them, I think it was inevitable. I was being raised in an atmosphere where I was being tugged in two directions. English was my first language, and I never learned any of the languages my parents knew. They wanted me to understand it, but they never taught it to me because they wanted me to integrate. But they didn't want me to assimilate. It becomes a very complicated push and pull. I still haven't figured that out.

JD: You talk about growing up in Calgary, and how there was a pretty large Indian community, but you say you didn't feel like they were your people. Did you ever start to feel like they were?

SK: Not when I lived there. I left when I was seventeen. Calgary is . . . oh, I love explaining Canada. Calgary is in the West. It's in the prairies. They make oats and cows. It's a very conservative white area.

No, I never really felt like we connected with them. We didn't live in the neighborhood where they had all settled. We lived in a white neighborhood. I don't know if that was a conscious choice on my dad's part when they moved. He wanted us to be Canadian. He wanted us to be North American. So a good way to do that is to make you live with other white people . . . I mean, with white people . . . See how easy it was to slip into that? Oh, I'm glad he's not here.

JD: Was there ever a point, like, later on, when you started trying to maybe feel more of a connection?

SK: Not until I moved to Toronto, which is on the other side of the country, basically.

JD: Your father is everywhere in the book.

SK: He's exhausting.

JD: How do you describe your relationship with your father to people? Even if you haven't read the book, if you follow Scaachi on Twitter, you start to realize he's this character who . . .

SK: He's always calling. My dad is sixty-seven. He is the oldest in his family, which by brown standards means he is a fucking pain, because the eldest boys are so spoiled and so needy. So he's, like, needy, but he's the patriarch, and he's very funny but he gets mad easily, and he's aging, and he's not OK with it . . . He's like if your pet could speak to you all the time and tell you every need and anguish they have, and if they also had a cell phone and texted them to you. I love him a lot, but he's 90 percent of the work that I do.

JD: He wrote your bio.

SK: He did.

JD: He says you stole some of his material, I think.

SK: See what I mean? Like, so dramatic. He routinely calls and asks for a portion of my advance. His new thing is, he calls and says, "What's the number?" by which he means "What's the number of books sold?" — as if I have that information every day. Then, if I have the number, by chance (because I will have to text my editor and say, "My father is asking what's the number"), he'll ask me if that's better or worse than some other author, and it's always someone that's unreasonable. Franzen. He wants to know if Oprah's read it. I haven't talked to her in a WHILE, so I'm not sure.

JD: For some reason, I kept opening the book to the text or email where he mentions Suge Knight.

SK: He loves Suge Knight. And he doesn't know who Suge Knight is. He sent an email that says something about how Suge Knight "upset the humdrum routine of everyday life." I was like, "He might be a murderer." My dad's response is, "Murder is necessary to social order." This is his vein. Should I read the bio?

JD: You can read whatever you want.

SK: I emailed him . . . This is a real email. People always tell me that I made this up, as if I have the goddamn time. I emailed him on November 24th of last year and said, "My publisher wants you to write my author bio for the back of the book." He answered with: "Who would have the editorial control? I need some ironclad guarantee that they do not turn what I write, which would be insightful and very succinct, into some post- pubescent pablum." I replied, "I have spoken to my editor, and she has guaranteed that she will not edit you." That was my mistake. Then he says, "You must correct it for punctuation, which is elites trying to keep bourgeoisie like us down." Here it goes.

"The author of this book, Scaachi Molita Koul, is my daughter, born when Wife and I were at the cusp of entering middle age, but we were deliriously happy to welcome her after a particularly painful pregnancy. I am positive, or I would like to believe that she got a lot of material from my musings, which I expressed out loud to humor her. It could also be that I was vicariously living through her. I am almost certain she has presented me in a very poignant and loving way, or, again, I could be delusional. If I am presented as a crank or an Indian version of Archie Bunker, then my revenge would be complete, because I named her Scaachi with a silent 'c'."

He's a lot. And that's every day.

JD: In one part of the book, you talk about how you're able to sort of blend within Canadian media.

SK: Oh, yeah. Canadian media is a lot smaller, obviously, than the U.S. — we have a lot fewer people and fewer outlets. And it is, by nature, designed to be a lot whiter than it is here. What ends up happening is that the very few people who get picked to enter that space are being allowed because of those gatekeepers thinking this crosses off the diversity box without actually addressing any of the issues.

A few weeks ago a bunch of Canadian editors of very large newspapers were talking on Twitter at, like, eleven o'clock at night on a Thursday about how they were going to set up a fund for what writer could best culturally appropriate from another group of people. Which is insane. They also came up with, like, three grand in an hour, which is, like: If you can do that, just give it to me! I'll do something with it. That's a great snapshot of what's going on in Canada in terms of how people talk about indigenous people and people of color, and how the media treats those voices as complete tokens without actually using them for any good. Because I'm fair- skinned, they'll let me come in and I can do certain things. But if I say too much, I get in trouble. And I get in trouble all the time.

JD: I know that a lot of women in media deal with this, but you've taken an unnecessary amount of abuse. With all you've had to go through, was there any sort of apprehension about writing this very personal book?

SK: I have a real impulse control problem, so I don't know how to not do stuff. As soon as I decide I'm going to do it, that's it. That's a bad thing sometimes, but in these cases it's probably beneficial.

A book costs money. So if you would like to yell at me but you would also like to give me $16, I encourage it. Feel free. But most people aren't going to pay the entry fee to call me the c-word. If you already don't like me, this book just affirms what you already believe. If you think that I believe in white genocide — well, you're not going to get any different information from this. Good luck! So it hasn't felt any different.

JD: There was a really smart New Yorker article a few weeks ago about the end of the personal essay boom. Did you read it?

SK: Yes.

JD: What did you think? There are two kinds of personal essays, in my opinion. There are really horrible personal essays. But then, there are great ones, and you have a book full of them.

SK: It's my understanding that the person who wrote that just got a deal to write an essay collection. So they're not over by any stretch. I think her argument is that there was a time a little while ago when a lot of media outlets were buying kind of easy- disposable personal essays because they were cheap, so you could go to somebody and say, "I need to fulfill these diversity quotas, so I'm going to talk to a bunch of women of color and say, 'Please write about being a woman of color.' " It's an easy thing to do. It's low labor, because you don't always have to do research.

Some of those essays were really great. I was probably a part of that boon before this book came out, and I worked in that space, too.

JD: A lot of great writers came out of that.

SK: Totally. But at the same time, people write essays who are maybe not ready. They don't always get the editing time they need. So you've got this mass of essays that are terrible, but they've been produced because they're easy to make.

But I don't know if you can say that essays are done, because people have been writing essays forever. I've made this joke 100 times, but dudes write essays about their wangs all the time and say, like, "This is my opus." It's not looked at as this trend thing. It's just a book. But for some reason, as soon as people whom we don't consider to be the majority — women or women of color or non-binary people or queer people — start writing essay collections, those groups get lumped into this idea that diversity is a passing trend.

JD: You've been touring, doing events since the book came out in the U.S. in May. Can you pinpoint one thing that people have come up and talked to you or emailed you about?

SK: I notice that a lot of brown girls tell me they'r glad there is something that explained things that they were having happen to them, so it gives them some sense they're not entirely isolated. A lot of dudes have emailed me, like, "Oh, I'm terrible; I had no idea." That's been refreshing. But I think people find their own thing from it. A lot of people who have had bad relationships with their dads said that it either gave them some comfort because their dad isn't around any more, or it's gotten them to call him or whatever else. So he's done one good thing.

JD: We have you!

SK: Well, my mother did that.

JD: He's one-half.

SK: Well, who knows?

JD: Do we have any questions from the audience?

Woman: Did your father read the book?

SK: No. He did not. He thought about it, and I was, like, "You could . . . but should you?" What really stressed him out was when I said, "Well, there's an essay in there about my body" — he was, like, "Never mind." He hasn't bought it. He keeps putting it on hold at the Calgary Public Library, because he thinks that (and I quote), "It generates buzz." He puts it on hold, then he lets me know when the hold comes down, and then he drops the hold.

Man: I'm interested in whether you had an audience in mind when you wrote this book.

SK: I wrote the book for brown girls, and then I thought everybody else would be icing. There are words that I don't translate. I figure that's a calling card for people who don't get a lot of stuff. We don't get a lot of stuff in pop culture. We don't get a lot of stuff outside what our families have given us, and we don't get to see it out in the world. So that's fine. That said, my editors, who are white, would come to me and say, like, "This needs to be explained." Which is good. I don't want to write a book that can't be read widely. But generally, I'd say I wrote it for people who look like me. I figure that if you come to a book with an open mind, you're going to be able to find a way through. I'm hoping that happened with this.

Woman: You said "editors." How many editors did you work with?

SK: Three. I have one in the U.S. and two in Canada who edited it, because we sold the book first in Canada.

Woman: Was the editorial feedback different from your U.S. editor? SK: No. They seemed to agree — with one exception. My U.S. editor wanted me to take out one joke. I refused. It was a really dumb joke about flying over Canada, if I fell out of a plane (because I'm afraid of flying), and that my anus would end up in Edmonton. "This doesn't make sense here; they won't get it." "I don't care! It is an important joke . . . It's funny! But the reason why it's extra-funny in Canada is because Edmonton is garbage, but also because I'm from Calgary, and Calgary and Edmonton hate each other. So there's layers.

Woman: Being a brown woman, do you ever get the silly "But you speak so well"?

SK: Constantly. Literally all the time. Canadians are such racists. Like, don't worry. We're all messed up, too. It's not better. It's just quieter, I guess.

JD: You have health insurance.

SK: Yeah. We have health insurance, French is mandatory in grade seven, and it's racist.

Woman: I read a lot of dumb white men. That's all we read in high school. Any women, any people of color, any women of color who are contemporary writers that you would recommend?

SK: I keep talking about Samantha Irby, which is kind of biased because she blurbed my book, but the one that just came out, We Are Never Meeting In Real Life, is so funny and so gross. I'd never met anybody who talks about poop more than me — and she does. Vivek Shraya has a collection of poetry called Even This Page Is White. I don't read a lot of poetry, but I really like that book.

Man: Samantha Irby and you incorporate humor into your essays, which is often seen as a no-no in literature . . .

SK: Is it?

Man: Because so many people want to be taken seriously.

SK: Oh, I don't.

Man: But if you're not a part of the canon, you might be afraid to make that step towards humor. In theory, if you're a woman writer, you're already "not taken seriously," so why add another layer of a thing that won't be taken seriously?

SK: I'm not good at being serious. The book proposal was basically like a knock-knock joke book, and the first draft was joke-heavy. My editors were like, "Maybe you should have an argument, not just write forty jokes about your weird vagina." What this ended up being is better, for sure. But my tendency isn't to go from serious and then add some jokes. It's the other way around. That's hopefully why it seems funny without being forced.

Man: Other than your dad, what forms your humor?

SK: The crushing reality of death. (You guys got so dark when I said that!) Bo Burnham had a special a little while ago called Make Happy that I really enjoyed. It's very odd, very funny, really dry. When I was younger I watched Jon Stewart specials, and I watched a lot of Chris Rock, and I watched Louis C.K. Those are probably the things that have informed me.

Woman: Not to put pressure on you, but are you going to write another book?

SK: I'm supposed to, because that's what you're supposed to do . . . I guess. I don't know if I've got another first-person essay collection in me right now. That's probably a good thing. Maybe I'll write some erotica. I think the world needs some sarcastic erotica.

Editorial Reviews

Koul often cites David Sedaris as an inspiration, and his influence can be felt in the way she relates dark family dynamics as punchlines…In Koul's writing, the emotional experience of anxiety is rendered, paradoxically, in a relaxed tone. Loss, pain and suffering are treated with the knowledge that they will happen eventually, and what's more, something even worse could come. She captures well that leap our minds make to manufacture catharsis when faced with what appears to be a bottomless pit of despair.

The New York Times Book Review - Haley Mlotek

★ 03/13/2017
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)

Publishers Weekly

"Looking for a voice-of-their-generation type writer? No pressure or anything, but BuzzFeed writer Scaachi Koul might fit the bill. Drawing comparisons to Mindy Kaling and Roxane Gay, Koul is a voice for outsiders, children of immigrants and just about any other millennial trying to make their way in today's perplexing world with this entertaining and thought-provoking collection of essays.”—Rolling Stone

"Heartfelt, clever essays."—Sarah Begley, TIME

"You're probably already in love with Scaachi Koul on Twitter, so if you read this book, be warned that you'll likely fall even deeper. Equal parts hilarious and profound, it's simply a must-read."—Cosmopolitan (Best Books to Read This Spring)

“I want to compare Koul to Nora Ephron and David Sedaris so that you'll buy the book (and because it is that funny), but her deft voice—with its smirking gut punches, its generous exasperation—is unmistakable, or at least will be soon."—The Village Voice

“Koul is one of the funniest people online, both in her work for places like Jezebel and The New Yorker and her must-follow Twitter feed...It’s stunning how well Koul can alternate between self-deprecating, eye-opening, and heartbreaking [in this collection], or when she just does all three at the same time."—Vulture (Books Every Comedy Fan Should Read)

“Koul’s essays are sharp, hilarious, and insightful.”—The New York Post

"[Koul's] collection of thoughtful, funny essays made me think of Nora Ephron's effortless voice."—The Seattle Times

"[One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter] has made me a smarter, more curious, and more courageous woman. Scaachi Koul is electric in her honesty and humor...When authors like her courageously write about, and in turn magnify, difficult topics such as sexism, addiction, and biases, all other women are put in abetter position to succeed."—Elite Daily (Nine Books That Have Gotten Me Through Heartbreak, Love, & Everything in Between)

“Koul manages to balance uproarious comedy with poignant blows to the gut, somehow mastering the art of being both fun and affecting, outrageous and vulnerable.”—Bustle

"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."—The Toronto Star

"Deeply personal and humorous...In order to overcome racism, it must have a strong light shone on it to illuminate all its ugliness. Koul does this by bringing her vulnerability, honesty and, of course, wry sense of humour to the discussion. She weaves stories, which through their cultural uniqueness and specificity, become universal and applicable to all."—The Globe and Mail (Toronto)

"A first-generation Canadian with Indian parents, Koul offers up hilarious yet poignant takes on cultural issues from body image to stereotypes that fans of Roxane Gay are sure to love."—Orange County Register

“One Day We will be Dead and None of This Will Matter is full-throated Scaachi Koul—acerbic, honest, warm, funny, and occasionally confessional….Koul’s essays are necessary at a time in our culture when xenophobia and misogyny are on the rise and when social media allows hatespeech to traverse across the globe. Koul’s courage and her astute observations tempered by a wicked wit make this collection of essays worth reading.”
—International Examiner

“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 also reflects poignantly on race, sexism, and body image issues…. 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.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“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...Like all great essays, Koul’s will inform and entertain both those who already identify with her and those who don’t yet.”—Booklist

"One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter is an absolutely wonderful, impossible-not-to-love book. Whether writing about race or girlhood, the internet or family, Scaachi Koul's writing makes each issue feel fresh and newfound. Hilarious but thoughtful, Koul draws you in to her life and makes you never want to leave."—Jessica Valenti, New York Times bestselling author of Sex Object

"One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter made me laugh embarrassingly loud on the train while surrounded by snarling, irritated commuters, approximately 1,729 times. And she has so many killer lines that destroyed me. Scaachi Koul is a miracle."—Samantha Irby, author of We Are Never Meeting in Real Life and Meaty

"Koul writes with a humor that elevates her worries into something more universal…[A] funny yet poignant collection of essays.”—Shelf Awareness

"One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter is moving, edifying and funny besides."—The National Post

“An iconoclast whose voice will likely resonate with a specific generation.”—Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

01/01/2018
This debut collection of essays from BuzzFeed writer Koul is at once insanely funny and vulnerable. Koul discusses her Indian family and her break from their social norms (as when she introduced her parents to her boyfriend, who was white) and prejudice encountered both in her Indian culture and her life in Toronto, among many other anecdotes about womanhood, fears, gender roles, and positive body image. In one memorable entry, the author talks about how lighter skin is prized in India. Koul, who is fair-skinned, is revered for her beauty in India, but she discusses how in Canada the color of her skin matters in a different way. She says, "I'm not white…but I'm just close enough that I could be, and just far enough that you know I'm not. I can check off a diversity box for you, but I don't make you nervous." She injects her blunt outlooks on life with hilarity. Koul's work for BuzzFeed give this volume added YA appeal. VERDICT An extremely teen-friendly series of writings on important subjects.—Tyler Hixson, Brooklyn Public Library

School Library Journal

2017-02-20
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.

Kirkus Reviews