Fatty Fatty Boom Boom: A Memoir of Food, Fat, and Family

Author and narrator Chaudry (Adnan’s Story: The Search for Truth and Justice After “Serial”) recounts a life spent both loving and hating her relationship with food and her own body. With dry wit and refreshing candor, Chaudry discusses her origins as the scrawny child of recent immigrants from Pakistan to the United States, who became a chubby devotee of fast food and convenience packaging. She describes return visits to Pakistan, where she encountered body shaming but also forged a profound love for the dishes of her culture. Chaudry’s narration offers up raw honesty when she recounts the way she would turn to food for emotional comfort, her many attempts to control binge eating, and the impact of negative body image on her self-esteem. She equally conveys the joy of creating connections through food: sharing street food with her Pakistani relatives, learning about the cultures of her Indian and Sri Lankan college friends via their cuisines, and snuggling over cups of chai with her second husband.