Fatty Fatty Boom Boom: A Memoir of Food, Fat, and Family by Rabia Chaudry
A warm, intimate memoir with a starred review by Publisher’s Weekly about food, body image, and growing up in a loving but sometimes oppressively concerned Pakistani immigrant family. Searingly honest, relatable and powerful, Chaudry shares her story of a woman grappling with a body that gets the job done but refuses to meet the expectations of others.
“I cannot recommend Fatty Fatty Boom Boom highly enough. I can’t wait for my friends to read Rabia’s story, for my kids to try Rabia’s recipes, and for the world to know more about this remarkable woman.” – Chelsea Clinton
Where to Buy
Order Now
There are multiple places you can order your copy of Fatty Fatty Boom Boom. Add it to your next Amazon order or support your local independent book store.
Fatty Fatty Boom Boom:
A Memoir of Food, Fat, and Family
by Rabia Chaudry
A warm, intimate memoir with a starred review by Publisher’s Weekly about food, body image, and growing up in a loving but sometimes oppressively concerned Pakistani immigrant family. Searingly honest, relatable and powerful, Chaudry shares her story of a woman grappling with a body that gets the job done but refuses to meet the expectations of others.
“I cannot recommend Fatty Fatty Boom Boom highly enough. I can’t wait for my friends to read Rabia’s story, for my kids to try Rabia’s recipes, and for the world to know more about this remarkable woman.” – Chelsea Clinton
Where to Buy
Order Now
There are multiple places you can order your copy of Fatty Fatty Boom Boom. Add it to your next Amazon order or support your local independent book store.
Chai Recipe
Rabia's Custom Chai Blend
Directions (makes one cup)
– One Fatty Fatty Boom Boom special blend teabag
– 1/2 cup water
– 1/2 cup whole milk
I only buy my tea from Pakistani or Indian grocers because nothing in the regular supermarket tastes as rich and flavorful as teas imported from back home, though Tetley comes close. My favorite brand is called Vital Tea, but Tea India and Tapal Danedar are also pretty damn good. But for my very special readers I made a very special blend – the Fatty Fatty Boom Boom aromatic tea blend.
Combine the water and milk bring to a boil. Lower to a low simmer, add sugar to taste and one teabag, and let simmer for five minutes.
Strain and serve piping hot, preferably in a beautiful teacup with a delicate saucer.
Enjoy!
Rabia
Music From A Memoir
Rabia’s Playlist
Science tells us that music doesn’t just help us retrieve memories, it also helps us create new ones. Join Rabia on a musical tour through her memoir, Fatty Fatty Boom Boom. Each chapter playlist will reveal audio inspiration from a lifetime of memories. Listen while you read, or just because.
Teaser
About the Book
From NY Times Bestselling author of Adnan’s Story comes Rabia Chaudry’s second book, Fatty Fatty Boom Boom: A Memoir of Food, Fat, and Family. The memoir traces the story of Chaudry and her family as they arrive in America as Pakistani immigrants to the land of milk and honey. The land gives and gives, packing on the baby fat, much to both the immediate and extended family’s horror. What ensues is a decades long struggle with weight, and more significantly with the problem and concerns others have with Chaudry’s weight and body. Woven throughout this persistent theme in her life are the intimate family stories connected to food, particularly Pakistani food, a cuisine often overlooked, unknown, or conflated with Indian cuisine.
Chaudry chronicles the dozens of times she tried and failed in achieving what she was told was her ideal weight, and shares for the first time the experience of getting weight loss surgery, a secret she has kept even from her closest family. But her memoir is as much about her struggle for weight management and acceptance as much as it is a love letter to her Pakistani roots, and Pakistani cuisine, and culminates in ten of her favorite recipes. This is a book for anyone who loves food and family stories, and understands what it’s like to be judged for their pudge.
EXCLUSIVE CONTENT
RABIA’S MEMOIR PHOTO ALBUM
A special perk of being a Fatty Fatty Boom Boom book owner is access to exclusive content, including a visual treat of the life of Rabia Chaudry — an expansive photo library from her memoir, Fatty Fatty Boom Boom. If you’ve purchased the book, fill out the form to gain instant access to the digital photo library.
Photo Album Perks
What others have to say
Praise + Reviews
Chelsea Clinton
I cannot recommend Fatty Fatty Boom Boom highly enough. I can’t wait for my friends to read Rabia’s story, for my kids to try Rabia’s recipes, and for the world to know more about this remarkable woman.
Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Victory is sweet and savory in this ebullient tale of self-acceptance.
Valerie Bertinelli
A delicious and mouthwatering book about food and family, the complicated love for both, and how that shapes us into who we are. It’s such a relief to not treat food as the enemy any longer and start to learn how to love and nourish the body I have today. I absolutely loved it!
Michael W. Twitty
James Beard Award-winning author of The Cooking Gene
Rabia Chaudry has given us the next chapter in the story of how food shapes self and how self shapes food. Here is an American, a South Asian woman writing at the intersection of food, tradition, gender, the body and pressures without and the journey within. This is an important and savory work.
Phuc Tran
author of Sigh, Gone: A Misfit’s Memoir of Great Books, Punk Rock, and the Fight to Fit In
Beautifully weaving together stories of food, family, and self-discovery, Rabia Chaudry’s memoir Fatty Fatty Boom Boom is complex, rich, and revelatory. I was deeply moved by her vulnerability, delighted by her self-deprecating humor, and awe-struck by her honesty. Chaudry sets a grand table before us and invites us to join her as she presents readers with her struggles, triumphs, and insights as a young girl in Pakistan, an awkward middle schooler in Maryland, and a young wife, advocate, and activist. Fatty Fatty Boom Boom is surprising, fiery, and heart-felt. Chaudry’s most important recipe contains the ingredients for loving and honoring who we were, who we are, and who we aspire to be.
Wajahat Ali
author of Go Back to Where You Came From: And Other Helpful Recommendations on Becoming American
Rabia Chaudry’s Fatty Fatty Boom Boom is a hilarious and brutally honest journey told with candor, charm and wit about learning how to love yourself and your body unapologetically while navigating a roller-coaster of a life populated with eccentric and lovable Pakistani family members, delicious food recipes, awkward childhood crushes, failed diets, and Husky pants. I laughed at characters and scenes that seemed lifted from my own Pakistani home and winced at the colorism and fat-shaming that is often so prevalent but unchallenged in our communities. The big-hearted book takes on all of it with an invitation for all of us to be better, while enjoying a glorious, fried samosa along the way.
Geraldine DeRuiter
founder of Everywherist.com and author of All Over the Place
A delectable memoir that reads with the intensity of a novel. Devour it all at once, or savor it slowly—there’s no wrong way to enjoy this funny, heart-wrenching, and brutally honest journey of food, family, and learning to love yourself.
Tung Nguyen
author of Mango and Peppercorns
This unflinching and often humorous memoir of a Pakistani girl shows us Rabia Chaudry’s resilience while highlighting her determination to celebrate the foods she loves. I was rooting for her as she learned to control food instead of food controlling her.