Fatty Fatty Boom Boom Quotes

“Fair desi men didn’t marry dark girls. Only dark desi men married dark girls, but if they could avoid it, they’d marry a fair girl, too. After all, they had to think about the next generation. These were the unwritten rules of our racist culture.”
― Rabia Chaudry, Fatty Fatty Boom Boom: A Memoir of Food, Fat, and Family

“The chaotic joy of a desi wedding, the bride and groom’s families with them every step of the way, the noise and colors, the jewels dripping off the bride and pretty much every woman in attendance, now that was a celebration.”
― Rabia Chaudry, Fatty Fatty Boom Boom: A Memoir of Food, Fat, and Family

“The propaganda worked, not just on my mother, but across the region. It was, we know now, a global scheme engineered by Nestlé to get mothers hooked on formula and to give up breastfeeding. Mothers were taught the risks of breastfeeding and discharged from hospitals armed with sample boxes of formula and baby bottles, ready to rear their children like their wealthy, wondrous, Western counterparts who had already bought into the marketing. But when my grandfather examined the ingredient list on the back of the Nestlé tin can, he flung it across the room. “What is this nonsense?” Dada Abu raged. This was not milk from a living creature. Not from a goat or cow or buffalo or sheep. It was dead milk, made from dead, fake ingredients. And no way was his granddaughter going to be drinking this trash.”
― Rabia Chaudry, Fatty Fatty Boom Boom: A Memoir of Food, Fat, and Family

“The sighs were deep and heavy. A daughter. Their younger brother’s first child was a girl. It wasn’t the end of the world, but a first-born son was just so much more desirable. A son would grow up to take care of his parents, but a girl would be raised and basically just given away to another family. A son would bring home a wife, and the wife’s dowry. A daughter meant you had to establish a dowry and give it away in order to marry her off. Sons relieved you of burdens, and daughters brought them on. When you’ve been raised to believe that this is just how it is, it’s natural to keep passing it on.”
― Rabia Chaudry, Fatty Fatty Boom Boom: A Memoir of Food, Fat, and Family

“But when I dug deeper, I realized the self-loathing was less about what I looked like on the outside, and more about feeling out of control and helpless.”
― Rabia Chaudry, Fatty Fatty Boom Boom: A Memoir of Food, Fat, and Family

“Every person, I'd argue, has the right to pursue what feeling good means to them.”
― Rabia Chaudry, Fatty Fatty Boom Boom: A Memoir of Food, Fat, and Family

“What confused Abu about Mama’s dishes was that they all seemed like variations of the same thing to him—tomato sauce, pasta, and cheese. He couldn’t tell the difference between spaghetti and linguini and ziti and lasagne other than the shape of the noodles. They all tasted the same, and pasta itself didn’t seem right to him. It looked like uncooked dough, pale and flabby. Who boils dough? Dough should be baked or fried. Pasta was a neglected doughy stepchild that didn’t quite complete the journey to being actually cooked.”
― Rabia Chaudry, Fatty Fatty Boom Boom: A Memoir of Food, Fat, and Family