Scan barcode
A review by basha
One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter by Scaachi Koul
3.0
I kept thinking I would like this book more, I felt like the author kept coming just shy of poignant insight or acute social/political critique. for example - her chapter on race talked about colorism as problematic, but really did not really engage with her privilege. Talking about striations of privilege without quite locating your place in them seems at best self indulgent, but also irresponsible? For example, she talks about the way anti-blackness is yielded against her, but not her actual positioning in relation to an anti-black racism. It’s like she read a Bell Hooks book, but could not teach a class on the content.
The way she talked about her family’s anxiety and her relationship with her parents is compelling, but I kept thinking it was going to go deeper than it did. Some of what she said about her father was brutal, maybe her might tone was an intentional device to manage the gravity but it didn’t feel effective.
Maybe my ambivalence about this book is because I just read two other memoirs that deal with trauma and mental health more explicitly (Heavy, Rebel Girl). This felt like it was floating on the surface of something deeper.
The way she talked about her family’s anxiety and her relationship with her parents is compelling, but I kept thinking it was going to go deeper than it did. Some of what she said about her father was brutal, maybe her might tone was an intentional device to manage the gravity but it didn’t feel effective.
Maybe my ambivalence about this book is because I just read two other memoirs that deal with trauma and mental health more explicitly (Heavy, Rebel Girl). This felt like it was floating on the surface of something deeper.