Chaudry, Rabia

Rabia Chaudry is a Pakistani American attorney, advocate, podcaster, and the author of the New York Times bestseller Adnan’s Story; the book was the basis of the four-part HBO documentary The Case Against Adnan Syed, for which she served as an executive producer. Chaudry is also co-producer and co-host of three podcasts: Undisclosed (360 million downloads), The 45th (four million downloads), and The Hidden Djinn. “My entire life, I have been less fat and more fat, but never not fat,” notes Chaudry. In Fatty Fatty Boom Boom: A Memoir of Food, Fat, and Family (Algonquin Books), she writes about her childhood diet of two full bottles of half-and-half per day, frozen butter sticks to gnaw on, and lots and lots of American processed foods – and that was before her parents discovered Burger King and Dairy Queen. In time she would come to love the Pakistani foods of her heritage, and learn to cook and eat them – in moderation. This memoir with recipes is a love letter to fresh roti, chaat, chicken biryani, ghee, pakoras, and an often hilarious dissection of life in a Muslim immigrant family. It is also a searingly honest portrait of a woman grappling with a body that gets the job done, but refuses to meet the expectations of others.