One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter by Scaachi KoulPicador, 2017

The ten essays in this book range in subject/tone from funny to serious, which I didn’t realize when I picked it up: I had read one of the funny ones and somehow thought the whole book would be like that, which it isn’t. Not that that’s a bad thing: I like Koul’s style, whether she’s writing about the problem-drinking of a close friend at university or getting stuck in a skirt in a dressing room. A lot of this book has to do with family: Koul’s parents emigrated from India to Canada before she was born, and she writes about their family history and their worries and expectations and quirks, and about the tensions and good parts of her relationship with them. Koul also writes about race and racism and privilege (including her own privilege as a lighter-skinned person of color); the parts of the book where she writes about going to a cousin’s wedding in India were really interesting in the way they melded humor and seriousness, travelogue and social commentary.