BuzzFeed’s Scaachi Koul Talks Humor, Canadian vs. American Politics & Why Twitter Isn’t Necessary
Photo Courtesy: Picador USA
I took Scaachi Koul’s collection of essays, One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter, with me to Las Vegas during my bachelorette party a few months ago. I knew that Koul was extremely funny and thought the book would provide some light reading while poolside at a cabana.
Koul’s opening essay came out of the gate hot, and I could not put the book down.
Her writing is extremely honest and open, and for me it was relatable. When she talked about being the only brown girl around her white classmates in Canada, I was transported back to my entire childhood existence feeling that same isolation. Her essay about a mortifying mishap in a Toronto dressing room had me simultaneously laughing while also cringing in sympathy. Each chapter plays out like a scene from a TV show, so it’s no surprise that recently Koul announced her essays will be turned into a scripted series by First Generation Films.
Koul also works as a senior writer for BuzzFeed and wrote a brilliant piece called “A User’s Guide to My Stupid Name” that should be required reading for anyone with a “culturally different” (aka foreign) name (I’ve lost track of how many times my name has been mispronounced in my life).
A few weeks ago, I chatted with Scaachi over the phone about her debut collection of essays, why Americans shouldn’t threaten to move to Canada after an election year and whether or not you need to be on Twitter to get hired.
The following interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Photo Courtesy: Barbora Simkova
Ngozi: What was it like writing this collection of essays and then seeing it come to completion and being published?
Scaachi: I mean, it’s weird. It feels like an out of body experience, but I feel some detachment to it at this point. It’s been a few months, but I’m happy with the result. I feel like people really like it, so that’s always good.
What has touring been like? What’s been the response you’ve gotten after talking to people who have read [O.D.W.A.B.D.A.N.O.T.W.M]?
Scaachi: I don’t mind touring. I find it kind of taxing because I don’t like traveling. It’s tricky especially if you don’t like being on a plane and then being on a lot of planes is not exactly an ideal situation. It’s been nice to go to different cities and talk to different people and hear about different perspectives outside of Canada and in the States. It’s been fun.
You’ve talked about just how personal you were able to get with this book, and you even open with an essay on anxiety. You talk about a lot of serious things. Did you ever feel like there was a sense of ‘Someone’s reading my journal without my permission’? Did writing these essays ever feel like that to you?
Scaachi: I guess so, but I don’t experience shame that often so it doesn’t really bother me. I think my general policy is if you write a personal essay and it feels too raw, then maybe it’s just not the time to write it. I have lots of stories like that where they just don’t feel ready and maybe they don’t feel funny and it’s not comfortable to get them up yet, and those are stories that I don’t [put out].
Humor is a big part of all of your work – not just in these essays but also in your work for BuzzFeed. Where does your humor come from and did it almost feel like it was developed as a defense mechanism over the years? I know for me, that’s how I developed mine. Do you think it’s your most powerful trait?
Scaachi: I feel like I was born with it. It’s certainly something I’ve honed, but I think it’s something I had at first. I think a lot about being funny is just sort of inherent – you either kind of have it when you were born or you don’t, and then from there you decide how important it is and how much you’re going to use it. I think it’s pretty clear for me in the book that I get a lot of my sense of humor from my dad because he’s insane. I think I realized pretty early on that being funny creates a social capital for yourself, but at 10-years-old if I could have traded being funny for being popular, I probably would have. But it was sort of like a thing that I had, so that’s what I used.
In this book, you use your humor and you’re funny, and then you cut to something that’s more serious or sad.
Scaachi: Well I do think that with the book, I can’t give you ten essays about the inescapable tragedy of human existence and not give you a joke. So there is something to be said about luring the audience in to talk about something that’s kind of serious and weighty, but I don’t feel like it’s disingenuous. I think the book is presented the way I would present myself in any social situation.
In your book, the essays that really resonated with me focused on race and identity and seeing oneself as a first-generation adult. In your essay, “Fair & Lovely,” you talked about pushing away your brownness for a long time, and I think most of us experience that feeling of otherness and go through that period of time. Was writing that essay cathartic, in a sense, knowing where you are now with your identity and how you see yourself?
Scaachi: Yeah, I mean sure. [All the essays] are kind of cathartic.
What was the process like writing that particular essay?
Scaachi: I mean I feel like it came quite naturally, so I don’t know if I’ve got a clean answer for how cathartic it felt because I feel like I came back from that wedding and just sort of had that in my head. Everything just kind of came together. That was the fourth or fifth trip I’d made to India in my life, and so I had all of these old memories, and I didn’t really know what to make of them. That was the first trip I’d made to India as an adult, and it was the first time we’d gone with my niece [Raisin] who’s biracial. I’d never had that point of reference, so I think it just kind of came together quite simply. I wasn’t really ruminating on it for very long because I think while I was there it was like, ‘Oh okay. Now I understand,’ and so all these pieces that were sort of missing came together simply.
You’ve talked about growing up Indian-Canadian, and you’ve mentioned how sometimes Americans think there are no racial issues [in Canada] and that it’s this “mythical” land. How do you explain to people here in the States why that isn’t true? I’m also curious because so many people here after an election year say, ‘I’m going to move to Canada’ after their candidate loses. What do you think when you hear people say that?
Scaachi: I think it’s laziness. I understand the instinct, but I think it’s sort of lazy. I mean in terms of the comparison point between the two countries, it’s hard to compare the two. You guys are 350 million, and we’re 35 million [people], so just by scale our issues are going to seem a lot less severe. The other part of it is in your recent election, the US has elected what is quite seriously the worst possible candidate they could have elected for president. So then by comparison, everything we do [in Canada] will not seem that bad.
I am troubled over the international fawning over Trudeau. I think for the first few months it made sense and it was fine, and now it kind of bothers me because he’s been in office for almost two years, and he hasn’t done anything. I have not seen him do anything, and I am more irritated by progressives who lie to you and lie to the base and say that they’re going to do something, and then they do nothing. That bothers me on an intellectual level and on an emotional level. It seems dangerous to dismiss what can and is happening in Canada because there are a lot of people here who are suffering, and it’s difficult to say, ‘Oh racism doesn’t exist.’ Well it’s really hard for me to listen to that when I know that there are swaths of communities – largely poor indigenous communities, poor people of color – who don’t have access to clean water in the country. If you look at what’s happening in Flint, it’s the same thing.
In terms of moving to Canada, I get it, and certainly there are things that Canadians have that Americans don’t, and I’m very thankful for those things. I can understand people who say they need to move because they need healthcare. That’s a reasonable thing. But this idea that ‘I’m going to move to Canada and everything is going to be fine’ – I can’t tell you how many times I do events in the US, and someone comes up to me and is like, ‘So if you go to school in Canada it’s free, right?’ No it’s not free. It’s cheaper, but by that token, our schools are not considered as prestigious [laughs]. There’s this set of lies that I feel like people told themselves about how things work up here, and then people think that they’re just going to show up. I don’t get it. I feel like they’re just going to be woefully disappointed.
Yeah, and it’s like obviously if you visit as a tourist you’re going to see or experience, a lot of times, the best parts of a country because you’re on a vacation and naturally you’ll be like, ‘Oh this place is great.’
Scaachi: Sure, and I mean there’s this thought that fundamentally Americans aren’t taught anything about Canada when you guys go to school. I mean you literally know nothing about us and then you become of voting age, and you think this is a bastion of socialism and I can go there and live there. I don’t know. I remember thinking that about Europe when I was younger. I thought that Europe was where you go if you want to live in a really liberal, hippie-dippy place and you can drink at sixteen, school’s covered and blah blah blah. That’s a really adorable way to think, but considering how many shootings have been happening there and the level and the tone of the racism – even just looking at what’s happened to London in the last few months – how can you continue to believe that? So I mean it just strikes me as lazy ideology. Nowhere is good. I hate to phrase it like that, but I don’t’ know where the good, safe place is. I’m really not too sure.
Also the solution to your country being fucked up isn’t leaving. It’s not, especially when people who are often saying, ‘I’m going to move to Canada,’ they more often tend to be white, and they tend to have enough money to pick up and go. It’s never poor people of color who say I’m going to move to Canada. I’ve never seen that. It’s always these white people who have some capital and some control in changing how the world is working and changing how their country is working. After Trump won, he won in part because of white women voted for him and then there were all these white women who said they were going to move to Canada, and I was like, ‘You know what, this is kind of your fault.’ So don’t fuck it up and then pack your bags and say you’re going to come here and probably ruin the few things we have here [laughs]. It’s just sort of shirking a lot of responsibility, and it’s often the people who are responsible for those problems.
Photo Courtesy: Barbora Simkova
I know everyone always talks about Twitter with you, but I wanted to talk to you in a different context in terms of your essay that you wrote speaking out against it. You quit the platform for a while and then you came back to it. Do you ever feel like being in media that we’ll ever go back to a point where your boss says, ‘You know what? You don’t need to be on this for me to hire you.’ Do you think that we should? I know that you edit for people too, and it’s a great way to even the playing field finding writers on social media.
Scaachi: I think right now you can get hired without having a Twitter account if your work is good. I don’t think it’s necessary. I think in some places my Twitter account is a detriment to my hireability. I don’t think that everybody likes it, so I’m not sure if that is even necessary. I think it’s just something that people have told themselves like, ‘Oh I need to do this.’ You don’t need to do this. I get a lot of young women who come up to me at my events and they ask me, ‘How do I make my Twitter account good so I get hired?’ You don’t need to. If you’re fighting with the platform and the platform sucks – and it does suck because it doesn’t give a shit about anybody – and it doesn’t feel good to be on it and you’re not having fun and you can’t see an upside? Don’t use it. Do the work instead. Do the work quietly. I get that it’s maybe less sexy because you don’t get to count how many retweets or whatever, and that’s obviously frustrating, but if you don’t want to do it, don’t do it.
I think right now younger people going into the industry are just born of that internet phase, and I certainly was. I was raised on social media and accessible YouTube and torrenting. I lived in that world so I’m very comfortable with it, but I don’t know if you need it. I mean my partner isn’t really using it that extensibly because it sucks [laughs].
Frankly, I think all of us who are using it right now are waiting for something better to show up because the company has made it so clear that they don’t care about us.
In one of your essays, you talk about your family meeting your partner. There’s the age difference and the fact that you’re in an interracial couple that made the reaction not what you guys would have preferred at first. In the context of what we’ve been talking about, did you ever feel like you had to be different in public around him or worry how people perceived you guys in a certain space?
Scaachi: I mean not particularly. I don’t think the racial aspect [was an issue]. Because we had a large age difference, there were more growing pains because I felt pretty young, and I think he felt quite old [laughs]. We didn’t spend time with my family, and that was where I would have felt like I needed to adjust my behavior.
Your family is good now with you two?
Scaachi: Yeah. The ending is like, ‘Yeah, everything’s okay.’ Like all things, it just took a minute, and now we’re fine, and I’m sure my parents will present some other sort of conflict for me. But everything’s okay right now.
Earlier you mentioned your dad, and he’s a big part of your essays. We see his humor throughout the book through the email excerpts at the end of each chapter, but there are a lot of complicated layers in you guys’ relationship that you talk about. Did you feel any type of guilt complex when writing about your parents?
Scaachi: In addition to not experiencing shame, I do not experience guilt. They are taxing and lovely people, so I feel like I have an inherent right to write about them. [My dad] is a highly emotional, easily irritated funny person, but he has sort of a set of standards – like a lot of parents – that seem impossible to meet, so that causes a lot of conflict. In the book in the initial drafts of him, he sort of came out a little cartoonish, and so we made an effort to make him an actual person and not just a cartoon. In the book, he’s presented through the lens of writing about where he grew up versus where I grew up or about the things that he wanted and then the things that I wanted that disappointed him. Between every chapter there’s an objectively insane email from him that makes no sense. Just to give you a taste.
Is there a particular essay from the book that you’ve received the most response from readers about? Or the one that was your favorite to write that you definitely wanted the world to read?
Scaachi: I don’t really have a favorite, and I think people respond to different chapters differently. I don’t know if I could pick one. I mean there’s only ten. I don’t know if there’s one that sort of sticks out the most.
Is there anything you’ve read lately that you would recommend to your readers?
Scaachi: I finished Omar El Akkad’s American War, which was really good. It’s fiction, but it’s excellent. Then I actually just read an oral history of The Daily Show. It’s this massive 420-page book, and I loved it. I would imagine it’s only appealing if you really love The Daily Show, but I really loved that. I have in front of me Theft By Finding by David Sedaris, which I haven’t opened yet. Then I also read Sam Irby’s We Are Never Meeting in Real Life which is very, very funny. That one is so good. It’s nonfiction essays, and it’s so hilarious and so brutal.