Lindy West's new memoir, Adult Braces, focuses on, among other things, her non-monogamous marriage. As you can imagine, all corners of the internet are having all kinds of feelings about it.
Scaachi Koul wrote a profile of Lindy for Slate which was, in my opinion, even-handed and empathetic.
In response, West's husband (Ahamefule Oluo) wrote an unhinged email to Scaachi and in so doing made himself look like a real piece of shit. Transcript of email is from an episode of the podcast ICYMI where Koul discusses the profile and the experience of receiving this email (in addition to receiving messages from Lindy herself and the third person in their non-monogamous relationship, Roya Amirsoleymani):
“This was such a shitty thing to do, Scaachi. You intentionally skewed this story to fit your own bitter narrative.
You wasted my time and all of our time to write an article that was going to be the same no matter what we said. You absolutely dehumanized me and intentionally diminished my personhood and career.
Roya and I were on a shared project in Boston. However you worded it, I was performing four shows at the Paramount, and Roya is my producer. I am a person with a life and a great career and a complicated life, and you boiled me down to a cheater who was on a school project making a diorama or some shit because you are mad about your life.
You barely wrote about the book, you just wrote rage bait articles specifically designed to direct hate toward me. You are a shitty fucking person, you're a bitter, untalented mean girl, and you should be absolutely ashamed of yourself. You fucking suck.
Ahamefule J. Oluo"
The podcast host points out that the (totally benign) piece of the post that Ahamefule seems particularly pissed about reads: West is solo in the cabin this week as she prepares for her 14-city book tour. Oluo and Amirsoleymani are away working in Boston on a shared project.
To which Koul responds: It is a shared project, and it is not a profile of Aham or Roya. It is a profile of Lindy, and so I wasn't spending a lot of time investigating what they were working on together.
Anyway, yikes. But I do love book drama.
ETA unpaywalled link: https://slate.com/life/2026/03/lindy-west-polyamory-open-marriage-husband-roya.html?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_content=scaachi_lindy&utm_campaign=&tpcc=reddit-social–scaachi_lindy
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