{"id":111354,"date":"2018-01-25T17:15:10","date_gmt":"2018-01-25T22:15:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/digiblocks.ca\/29secrets\/?p=111354"},"modified":"2023-09-29T13:07:47","modified_gmt":"2023-09-29T17:07:47","slug":"whats-secret-writer-scaachi-koul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/digiblocks.ca\/29secrets\/pop-culture\/whats-secret-writer-scaachi-koul\/","title":{"rendered":"What&#8217;s Her Secret: Culture Writer &#038; Essayist Scaachi Koul"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">After growing up in a predominantly white neighbourhood in Calgary and receiving her fair share of obnoxious, hurtful, and straight-up horrifying insults, Scaachi Koul has a thing or two to say about racism, sexism, and navigating childhood as the daughter of Indian immigrants. As a senior writer at <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">BuzzFeed<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, the 26-year-old journalist regularly writes about politics and popular culture. And in her powerful, honest, and at times laugh-out-loud-funny collection of personal essays <a href=\"https:\/\/www.chapters.indigo.ca\/en-ca\/books\/one-day-well-all-be\/9780385685351-item.html?ikwid=scaachi+koul&amp;ikwsec=Home&amp;ikwidx=0\"><i>One Day We\u2019ll All Be Dead And None Of This Will Matter<\/i><\/a>, she reflects on important and often difficult topics such as body image, Indian womanhood, rape and surveillance culture, fear of death, and parent-child relationships.\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Read on as we discuss her new book and she shares her thoughts on Twitter trolls, racism, and the awful year that was 2017.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>So how would you describe your book in a nutshell? By the way, I loved it.<br \/>\n<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Oh good, I\u2019m glad. I guess it\u2019s a collection of essays about things that make me anxious and miserable. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>What kind of response have you been getting from it?<br \/>\n<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It\u2019s been good. I mean, if I want to dig for bad reviews, I can find it. But generally speaking, it\u2019s been pretty positive. It\u2019s heartening to hear brown girls read it and feel like it makes sense to them. You know, I\u2019ve had a lot of white men read it too, which is kind of nice \u2014 they weren\u2019t my target, but I appreciate that they picked it up and that it was something they could learn from.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Who was your target reader?<br \/>\n<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Brown women. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Have you always wanted to be a book author? Or was that kind of an unforeseen but natural evolution from your career as a journalist?<br \/>\n<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I mean, I think it\u2019s like a pipe dream writers have in the back of their head. Like this is a thing I would do one day if someone would let me.\u00a0I didn\u2019t think anyone would let me. I don\u2019t know. I wish I could go back to when I was 15 and appropriately inquire. I think I often don\u2019t fully verbalize or articulate the things I would like to learn one day out of the anxiety of failing at it. So I usually don\u2019t say anything and I just quietly chip away at it, and then when it happens I deal with that later. But yeah, I\u2019m sure I did. I mean, everyone does. Even people that aren\u2019t writers want to write books.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-111356\" src=\"https:\/\/digiblocks.ca\/29secrets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/ONE-DAY-WELL-ALL-BE-DEAD-AND-NONE-OF-THIS-WILL-MATTER-ESSAYS-199x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"332\" height=\"500\" srcset=\"https:\/\/digiblocks.ca\/29secrets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/ONE-DAY-WELL-ALL-BE-DEAD-AND-NONE-OF-THIS-WILL-MATTER-ESSAYS-199x300.jpg 199w, https:\/\/digiblocks.ca\/29secrets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/ONE-DAY-WELL-ALL-BE-DEAD-AND-NONE-OF-THIS-WILL-MATTER-ESSAYS-100x150.jpg 100w, https:\/\/digiblocks.ca\/29secrets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/ONE-DAY-WELL-ALL-BE-DEAD-AND-NONE-OF-THIS-WILL-MATTER-ESSAYS.jpg 342w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 332px) 100vw, 332px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><b>When did you decide you wanted to be a writer and go into journalism?<br \/>\n<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That was an easier choice, because I had no other skills. I wasn\u2019t good at anything else. When I was in high school, I wrote for the school paper, I was an AP English student, and I had a 48 per cent in math. So your fate is written quite clearly when your options are that limited. So I needed to apply to a program that didn\u2019t require a math grade but would allow me to write. So I applied to Ryerson and I got in. I just was never good at anything else. I had no other transferable skills. I wish I did \u2014 maybe I would have picked something else. But probably not. I\u2019m also a narcissist so this is probably ideal.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>You\u2019ve talked a lot about how you\u2019re trying to fill a gap in the culture<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u2014 <\/span><b>you didn\u2019t grow up seeing yourself represented in popular culture or media. Do you think things have improved since you were a child?<br \/>\n<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, of course they have. But I wonder to what degree. People ask me that question all the time, but the only examples that they point to are Mindy Kaling and Aziz Ansari. So great, those are good shows, those are great actors, those are really cool creators. I\u2019m so thankful that they\u2019re around. But I don\u2019t think we\u2019re at a point yet where I\u2019m able to take for granted creators that are brown and black. I don&#8217;t feel like I\u2019m there yet. We\u2019re still in a space of like, what kind of work do they get to do? Where do they get to sit? And do we constantly have to defend that? I\u2019m even waiting for a bunch of dumb men to start smashing pots over their heads because <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt5164214\/\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ocean\u2019s 8<\/span><\/i><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is women only. We\u2019re still having those arguments. I don\u2019t get comfortable very easily. But of course things are moving, but the pace at which they move is very slow, so I\u2019m not giving anyone a pat on the back.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>You\u2019ve talked a lot about cyber bullying and harassment. What do you think is the solution to these problems?<br \/>\n<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I mean, it\u2019s like a fundamental thing about how we raise our children. And how white families raise their white kids. And how people parent boys. And how we raise straight kids. It\u2019s very elemental. And so it feels so condescending to be like, \u201craise your kids better,\u201d but that\u2019s a big part of it. It\u2019s about the stuff that we consume. It\u2019s about the things we read and the movies we watch and what we think is acceptable. I don\u2019t think teenage boys or young men or old men come out of the womb thinking \u201cI can be abusive to women.\u201d I don\u2019t think that\u2019s inherent. I think you learn that somewhere. You either learn it \u2014 and talking to the men who have yelled at me recently, or ever, it\u2019s like something about your dad. Your dad said something to you you thought was acceptable. Or you warped something about your mother. It\u2019s really basic family stuff. And then the other element of it is: what did you see in a movie that you thought \u201cwell if we can laugh about this, then maybe I can do it.\u201d There\u2019s a historical element. I mean this goes back to like 200 years ago \u2014 so how much time do you have? But those are the biggest pieces to me when I look at these things.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-111357\" src=\"https:\/\/digiblocks.ca\/29secrets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/scaachikoul-200x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"333\" height=\"500\" srcset=\"https:\/\/digiblocks.ca\/29secrets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/scaachikoul-200x300.jpg 200w, https:\/\/digiblocks.ca\/29secrets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/scaachikoul-100x150.jpg 100w, https:\/\/digiblocks.ca\/29secrets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/scaachikoul-395x594.jpg 395w, https:\/\/digiblocks.ca\/29secrets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/scaachikoul.jpg 499w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 333px) 100vw, 333px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><b>So it comes down to education.<br \/>\n<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I have to think so. This is bred in. This isn\u2019t something \u2014 I mean even the stuff that goes on with <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flare.com\/culture\/scaachi-koul-twitter-updates\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Twitter and how shitty the platform has been<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. The platform has been absolutely a fucking disaster. But deeper than that, the company and the men who run that company think it\u2019s okay to ignore harassment as an issue. But why? Why do they think that? And deeper than that, there are a bunch of people who behave like that. And this is their truest self. Because they know they can\u2019t do this at work but they can do this online, because there\u2019s no punishment for it. Those are some of the things that I\u2019m trying to tap into and I\u2019m trying to make sense of it but I haven\u2019t quite been able to grasp why. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>I was reading about <\/b><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theglobeandmail.com\/technology\/harassment-of-buzzfeeds-koul-shows-how-twitter-is-broken-for-women\/article28845004\/\"><b>what happened<\/b><\/a><b> when you put a call out on Twitter looking for non-white, non-male writers. It\u2019s absolutely scary what happened to you. Has anything on that level happened since that?<br \/>\n<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">No, because I think that I\u2019m at a point now where my following on Twitter is large enough that if anyone said anything to me, there\u2019s someone that would say something. Like the scale has tipped a bit in the last year. So not recently. There\u2019s always something. Nothing that targeted. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I think harassment, though it is something I still contend with, the scale has changed. I mean, I think it could still happen, I would just have to enter a new stratosphere with my career, which I just haven\u2019t yet. I\u2019ll let you know if it occurs. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>So learning from this experience, do you have any advice for young women on how they can navigate the social media world?<br \/>\n<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There\u2019s nothing I can say that is going to make it feel better if someone is threatening to kill you. So the only thing I can say, and I\u2019ve said this so many times, is you just have to wait. And you don\u2019t have to engage. You don\u2019t need to stay. You don\u2019t need to be on Twitter. You don\u2019t need to play on the Internet. None of these are obligations. If you want it, if you want to stay, and if it happens, the only real thing you can do is just wait, because they will lose and they will go away and they will lose interest \u2014 that is the hope. It\u2019s not a steadfast rule, and there are tons of women who have gotten it way worse than I have\u2026. Generally speaking, I would say, it goes away. You just have to give it a minute.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>In your interview with <\/b><b><i>Elle, <\/i><\/b><b>you were talking about how the media<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u2014 <\/span><b>which is largely white<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u2014<\/span><b> doesn\u2019t know how to talk about race with you. How do you think that white media and white people in general can better navigate these important conversations?<br \/>\n<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They can let brown and black people do it. That\u2019s a pretty simple solution. They don\u2019t have to take charge. It\u2019s not necessary. And that\u2019s not to say \u2014 and this is the other coin of that diversity hiring question. You should have those people be at the helm of those conversations but they don\u2019t only need to be in those spaces. You can hire a brown person to be a business reporter. They can work in your tech section. They can work in your lifestyle section. But if you want to have an honest conversation about race, you need to look internally. So I get this question a lot from white journalists because they want me to give them an answer, and I can\u2019t. You have to do stuff at your own organization. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>What\u2019s a piece of career advice that you\u2019ve received that you could pass on?<br \/>\n<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I would say you shouldn&#8217;t listen to your own hesitation when you\u2019re pitching ideas. Because a lot of the time when you\u2019re a young writer you think: <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">well, they\u2019re not going to buy this<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. You have to ignore the voice inside of your head telling you it\u2019s not going to work. And you just have to do it anyway. And I think it will yield better results than just waiting for your time to come up. Because it might just not come up. That number might not come up. And you just have to\u2026 That\u2019s the best I have to say. The rest is luck.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Because a lot of your work is so personal, how do you find the courage to share such personal things about yourself?<br \/>\n<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I don\u2019t think about that, because there is nothing in the book that I\u2019m embarrassed or uncomfortable with. Like what, are you going to come to me at an event and be like \u201cI hear you have knuckle hair.\u201d Like okay, sure. It\u2019s fine. I didn\u2019t shave it for the first half of my life. It doesn\u2019t make things more true or less true if you write them down. They don\u2019t go away. Sometimes they don\u2019t get better. It doesn\u2019t change anything. The only time I\u2019m cautious about it is when it involves other people, because then I\u2019m telling stories that aren\u2019t just my own. I\u2019m cautious when I talk about my partner, when I talk about my parents. With stuff like me, like okay, what are you going to do? There is nothing you can do about it. And because I\u2019ve already owned it, fine. I have yet to receive a repercussion from it more tangible than sometimes people come up to me and they probably feel a sense of intimacy with me that is one-sided. But that\u2019s not really the worst thing in the world. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>One of your notable articles was about <\/b><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flare.com\/culture\/2016-youre-the-worst\/\"><b>how awful 2016 was<\/b><\/a><b>. Now that 2017 is done, how are you feeling about it?<br \/>\n<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It was bad. It was all bad. Everything is bad. Was there anything good? No, it was a terrible year. It was confusing. It was a personally very rewarding and satisfying year. It was politically and contextually really awful. So I feel almost neutral because it kind of all balanced out. Like the world is ending and we\u2019re definitely going to die and Trump is going to get us killed and I hate Justin Trudeau and everybody is racist and sexist and I have no faith in humanity. However, my book did really well this year [laughs]. So it\u2019s hard to say. All years are bad. I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever ended a year and been like \u201cthat was a good one.\u201d I\u2019m really not sure I\u2019ve ever done that. I\u2019ve maybe said \u201cokay, that was tolerable.\u201d But I\u2019m not an optimist. I look for the bad first. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>What do you hope the book will leave readers with?<br \/>\n<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I hope it makes them feel a little less alone and I hope they get a laugh and I hope they hope it makes them call their parents more. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><em>Portrait photography by\u00a0Barbora Simkova.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After growing up in a predominantly white neighbourhood in Calgary and receiving her fair share of obnoxious, hurtful, and straight-up horrifying insults, Scaachi Koul has a thing or two to say about racism, sexism, and navigating childhood as the daughter of Indian immigrants. As a senior writer at BuzzFeed, the 26-year-old journalist regularly writes about [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84368,"featured_media":111355,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[81718],"tags":[65363,81103],"class_list":["post-111354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pop-culture","tag-interview","tag-whats-her-secret"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>What&#039;s Her Secret: Culture Writer &amp; Essayist Scaachi Koul - 29Secrets<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What&#039;s Her Secret: Culture Writer &amp; Essayist Scaachi Koul - 29Secrets\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"After growing up in a predominantly white neighbourhood in Calgary and receiving her fair share of obnoxious, hurtful, and straight-up horrifying insults, Scaachi Koul has a thing or two to say about racism, sexism, and navigating childhood as the daughter of Indian immigrants. As a senior writer at BuzzFeed, the 26-year-old journalist regularly writes about [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/digiblocks.ca\/29secrets\/pop-culture\/whats-secret-writer-scaachi-koul\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"29Secrets\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/29Secrets\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2018-01-25T22:15:10+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2023-09-29T17:07:47+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/digiblocks.ca\/29secrets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/Koul-Scaachi-PUBLICITY-1-credit-Barbora-Simkova-e1516917250717.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1000\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"665\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Sienna Vittoria Lefebvre\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@29secrets\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@29secrets\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Sienna Vittoria Lefebvre\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"11 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/digiblocks.ca\/29secrets\/pop-culture\/whats-secret-writer-scaachi-koul\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/digiblocks.ca\/29secrets\/pop-culture\/whats-secret-writer-scaachi-koul\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Sienna Vittoria Lefebvre\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/digiblocks.ca\/29secrets\/#\/schema\/person\/707b81371c320365aa37be51134906ed\"},\"headline\":\"What&#8217;s Her Secret: Culture Writer &#038; 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