Scaachi Koul Brings Indian Women Into The Divorce Lit Genre

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In her latest memoir Sucker Punch, Scaachi Koul was looking for “a boon.” Or in other words, she was looking for a blessing, primarily from her parents, to affirm her choice to marry her long time white boyfriend. However years after receiving it, when she’s finally married, Koul realizes that the blessing she was looking for was on the other side of her eventual divorce.

A follow up to her debut memoir One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter,  Koul enters into the canon of women authors who have written about their divorces from Nora Ephron’s Heartburn from more recent entries like Haley Mlotek’s No Fault: A Memoir of Divorce and Romance and Sarah Manguso’s Liars. Koul distinguishes herself, however, by being an Indian woman in the predominately white female genre of Divorce Lit. Drawing from her Hindu upbringing, Koul imagines herself throughout the book as the Hindu goddess Parvati who stands in multiple lakes of fire as a protest against her parents’ refusal to allow her to marry the deity Shiva. “I couldn’t tell if Parvati was standing in protest to show her devotion or to have her wishes be taken seriously,” she writes.

I spoke with Koul about her book Sucker Punch.

In the description of Sucker Punch you write how this book reshaped itself around your divorce and other events that took place during this period of time including your mom’s illness. What did you originally envision this book to be about? 

 I sold the idea for this book like seven years ago and I thought it was going to be an essay collection about conflict. It was going to be about the utility and futility of conflict. I wasn't even married then. My last book had just come out. I was still living in Toronto — things were very different. I started working on it, I wasn't quite making a lot of progress, and then I had all these plans to do all this reporting in 2020, and then the pandemic started, so all of my reporting plans were kind of like thrown away. And then, you know, I got a divorce,  my mom got cancer, I lost my job, and so I kind of had to start over. Then I decided to just start with what I had, which was a really exhausting couple of years to write about.

In many ways you still ended up writing a book about conflict.

 Yeah. Well, that was the thing. I was trying to write about conflict, but I was having this really central one in my life, but I wasn't addressing it. And so I was like, I can't believe I can't write this book about conflict. And it's like, well yeah, I was actually in a really avoidant space around it. So it was hard to litigate.

In Sucker Punch  you were talking about how open you were about your relationship online in particular and how that was like making your ex husband uncomfortable. What’s your relationship to social media now?

It did. I think he maybe had a different awareness of the dichotomy that that creates, when you sort of present that things are really good and you have stuff to deal with. He had more awareness of it than I did because I didn't really know fully what was going on. I didn't understand until later.  I probably wouldn't do that in the same way. Not that anybody's asking to do it the same way, but I probably wouldn't offer it. But it happens so slowly, you know? Like you're 20 and it's just like your little Instagram, right? And then one day you look up and you're like oh okay this is for work. 

A lot of this book deals with you contending with what you wrote in your first book and how much you obfuscated the details of certain events to the point where they become unrecognizable. Was it something you realized at the time you were doing? 

No, I didn't. My first book was a frustrating read for me because I see all the places that I don't necessarily think I was really accurate, but I was honest. I was honest in both of them. But I didn't know. Now I get it. We're always telling ourselves stories and maybe in the future I'll look at Sucker Punch and I'll be like, oh well this isn't quite it. I'm more acquiescent now of a shifting narrative. I accept it a little more. I realize life is so long. I'm gonna be different all the time and I wouldn't want to look back at old writing and feel like it's the same. I do want to feel like I have a different understanding of it. It means my brain's doing something. But no I didn't know. I really thought that's what was going on and I thought  that was the truth as far as I knew at the time

So much of your career has been about engaging in this commodified version of authenticity and vulnerability whether as a memoirist or as an internet personality. How do you parse who you are in your private life from the version of yourself you’ve made a career off of? 

 I think I give people like 25 percent. But it's such a good 25 percent that people think it's like more so people are always like “wow, you really share a lot.” The book is like 25 percent of whatever my marriage was because it's one sided and it's only a fraction of what I feel like saying. So that helps I think just keeping stuff to myself. I don't know. It's hard. I think sometimes 

I'm just sort of careful about my online security. It's sort of a boring answer, which is that I don't post my location. I don't tell people what neighborhood I live in. I don't do the forward facing camera thing that influencers have sort of created. It's like everybody sort of talks like that now on social media, which I think is nice. I like watching it, but I don't do a lot of that because I think it actually creates a new intimacy with the people who watch you and I already have that because people already see my face and they can read what I say so maybe that'll change. But right now I think like that's it. I say no to stuff.  I'm not on Cameo, you know, I'm just saying no.

I listened to your conversation with Haley Mlotek, whose book No Fault: A Memoir of Divorce and Romance I also read. Why do you think so many books are coming out right now about divorces?

 I think some of it is the age group. A bunch of female writers turn thirty [and] all of us were like: “I think I hate my husband.” And so there's something in that. I think a lot of women are reassessing their relationships with men. I certainly reassessed my relationship with white men in my divorce and in the last ten years. I'm 34 so I've only been an adult for only so long but that has sort of put me in a different space with men and how I speak to what kind of male energy I want in my life. I also think maybe enough time has passed in civilization where we're sort of at a new wave of women wanting a little more. That's what divorce is. Marriage feels kind of compulsory and inevitable for a lot of people and so to not do that is to be like, well, what else could my life look like? And what could the world look like? And I think maybe people are thinking about that more. I hope so. I am.

How did you want to distinguish your book from the others that were out there or was that even a concern of yours?

I knew that it would be different because a lot of the divorce books, generally speaking — and a lot of them are very good —  but they're written by white women. And so that's like one clear variable. Divorce is really uncommon in South Asian households. I went to a party a couple weeks ago and there was a brown guy there and I was wearing these red bangles, you usually wear them after you get married. So he thought, because I have hand tattoos, he thought I had just gotten married, that I had henna for my wedding.  And he asked me and I told him that I was divorced and he gasped. Like, some people are still really Victorian about it, which is so silly, but they are. And so I knew it would land differently in that way. And so I don't totally have to worry but it's still, there's lots of things that are sort of similar about other books.

It's a man, it's a white man. I'm straight, ostensibly a straight person, as I go through this book. The book isn't just about divorce and just about that nexus. I would also say what is important is that it doesn't end with me meeting another man and then being like “and then I fell in love and I figured it out.” So that also I think sets it apart.

I loved what you wrote about your divorce feeling like a gift of sorts to your mother and every other woman in your family even though you know they’d be disappointed. 

 Yeah, she didn't love it, but it felt like I was leaving for every woman I had ever known in my life.  'Cause there was a mundanity about the issues I had in my marriage, right? It wasn't like being bombastic, abusive, you know what I mean? Like a lot of these stories traffic in that and they have historically, when we look at the divorce genre, it's because those stories are like the ones that women have permission to tell. Like he had to be a brute for you to leave. And that's why no fault divorce is so important to Haley's book's entire existence. But it still felt important to be like, well, even if it is mundane, I still don't want to do it. 

You write about your husband's whiteness a lot and how that sort of eventually came to a head in your relationship. Was that something you thought about when your relationship first started and what are your feelings about it now?

 I haven't gone out with a white guy in a long time so I don't know. Does that answer it? I don't interact with a lot of white men that much anymore I've noticed. Professionally I work with a lot of women generally speaking. A fair amount of people of color. So yeah, they're just less present in my life.  Not on purpose. Some of my best friends are straight white men. 

[My ex husband and I] talked about some of the very obvious differences in our families. He was raised by these WASPS, like [his family] couldn't have a fight and mines like screaming at each other like that was clear but only sort of in the goofy Russell Peters way that I don't do anymore. But yeah, It didn't come up until later. 

What did getting a divorce give you permission to do? 

 Everything. And nothing. Every rebellion shrinks. Or it did, certainly in my circle, in my family. Every rebellion shrunk when I got a divorce. I remember when I started getting tattoos, my mom [rolled her eyes.] If I had done that before? Are you joking? It gave me permission for everything. [Divorce] felt like the failure to me. It was such a big failure to me. And so once you do the thing that you're like, fuck, that's like the worst case scenario.

I'm such a catastrophizer, but I couldn't envision divorce. It didn't even like compute to me.  But once you like have it and then it's fine. The bomb goes off and it's kind of just like a puff of smoke. Sucked but like nobody died  and you look around you're like, oh, okay. Everything's fine. 

All of the fears that are associated with divorce, which are so heady and often existential, and especially for women, right? Like, do people care about me? Does anybody love me? Am I alone in the world? Will someone take care of me? 

I lost some friends. I made some new ones. It was expensive. I made the money again. I didn't have a place to live. I found an apartment. I didn't own a couch. I bought one. You see how you can problem solve for yourself in a way. It's often sudden and really traumatizing but like impressive. So it gave me permission for everything. And I don't have to ask anymore, which is really nice. 

Your book ends on a hopeful note. Do you still feel hopeful about love? 

Sometimes. I mean, it depends. You should ask me this four times in a month, depending on my menstrual cycle.

When was the last time you felt cynical about dating?  

I don't know, like five minutes ago? Like right before, maybe during this interview, probably. I mean, like dating is terrible. I don't know if you date men but like it's rough. They are not sending us their best. They're not. I'm off the apps and stuff. I'm not doing that anymore right now.  We'll see if that changes. But you know, I'm a person in the world  and I welcome anybody to buy me a drink.