Roohi Choudhry’s debut novel Outside Women follows two migrant women, Sita in 1890s South Africa and Hajra in modern-day New York, whose lives are separated by a century but connected by a shared pursuit of justice. As Hajra uncovers Sita’s hidden history, the novel explores identity, resistance, and the enduring power of solidarity across generations.
She holds an MFA from the University of Michigan and has received honors from the New York Foundation for the Arts, Hedgebrook, and Djerassi. Her writing spans criminal justice reform, public health, and creative nonfiction, with work appearing in Ploughshares, Callaloo, Longreads, and The Kenyon Review.
We asked the writer to answer our recurring My Reading Life questionnaire so readers could get to know her better and discover the books that shaped her life.
What was the first book you were obsessed with as a child?
I grew up moving around Pakistan and southern Africa — all of them former British colonies. So, I was surrounded by British kids’ books, especially the ubiquitous Enid Blyton. I loved all her Famous Fives and Secret Sevens with pesky kids going around solving mysteries. But there was another Blyton that grabbed me from a young age. The Faraway Tree series features a massive, magical tree in a forest. Some kooky characters live in the faraway tree, like the saucepan man who has several pots and pans clanging around his body when he walks. There’s also a woman who keeps emptying tubs of dirty dishwater on unsuspecting tree-climbers.
The real magic of the tree though is at the very top. Up there, you climb a ladder into a cloudy parallel universe that floats above the tree. The lands at the top of the tree keep changing as they float past, and you have to be careful to climb back down in time or you’ll be stuck. The worlds that come through include one made entirely of chocolate, another where everyone is upside down, and lots of others. There was so much to love in these inventive books, but looking back, it seems clear why they appealed to me – a child of multiple migrations for whom borders and nation states were about as fixed as clouds moving past a tree.
What book helped you through puberty?
I struggle with this question because most of the books I read at the time are so forgettable! I did read some Judy Blume, whom I loved, but also a lot of Sweet Valley Highs and murder mysteries and shiny-cover authors like Danielle Steele. One that sticks out is Harriet the Spy. I kept a little copycat notebook with observations about other kids, which someone predictably stole and read out loud to the whole class, including the boy I had a crush on. Still not sure how I survived that day.
Another book that came to me a little later in my teenage years is more of a “got me through life” kind of book. Love and Longing in Bombay by Vikram Chandra. I found it at the library probably when I was 18 or so. I still remember the cover, sitting up in bed late reading it, how it felt like new rooms were opening up in my consciousness as I read. That book ushered me into a deeper understanding of queerness and faith and place and love. Getting my copy signed at an event about 15 years ago was a #goals moment.
What book do you think all teenagers should be assigned in school?
If we’re talking about schools in the United States, it has to be Octavia Butler’s Kindred. I’m so glad Butler is finally getting the attention she deserves. But a lot of people (understandably) focus on her Parables, and not as much on her first work. Kindred is the one that really captured my heart when I first began reading Butler a couple of decades ago. With its speculative approach to the legacy of slavery in this country, I think it’s a book that might make that vital conversation more accessible for teens.
If you were to teach a class on Damn Good Writing, what books would make the syllabus?
I’d start with Gloria Anzaldúa and This Bridge Called my Back. Finding that book in my late twenties was transformative– I felt I was part of a constellation of feminists of color rather than out here stumbling around on my own. From a craft of writing perspective, I love Anzaldúa’s work as an example of how writing doesn’t have to sound flourish-y or fancy to be damn good. In her “Letter to Third World Women Writers,” Anzaldua throws out all the literary rules and keeps breaking fourth and fifth walls. That breathless, raw urgency is partly what makes the essay endure decades later.
I’d add Saadat Hasan Manto’s collected stories to the syllabus. He’s a literary hero to most writers from South Asia but woefully unknown still in the U.S., though I’d argue he’s the absolute master of the short story form. I learn so much from his stories and wish I could more easily read them in their original Urdu. (My Urdu reading ability is very slow and plodding!)
The poet Naomi Shihab Nye must be on any list I put together for pretty much anything. Like Anzaldúa, she’s a writer whose powerful impact comes from stepping outside literary bounds and writing from a connection to community. There’s a deep wisdom to her work that never feels trite or expected.
Of course, this list would be incomplete without Toni Morrison, and I’d have to choose Beloved. I first read it when I was in college in Pakistan and it’s another reading experience I remember in a visceral way. This is a good reminder that I need to return to it – there’s no better craft teacher for writing about how the past haunts our present.
What books helped guide you while writing your book?
Outside Women is partly historical, so scholarship was important to getting the characters and texture right. Inside Indian Indenture was a key text and I found it at my favorite bookstore in Durban, Ike’s Books. Coolie Woman by Gauitra Bahadur came to me a little later, but it was such an instructive and inspiring book about bringing erased stories to life.
Ruth Ozeki’s Tale for the Time Being was incredibly helpful from more of a craft perspective. My novel braids the stories of two women who never meet and aren’t related by blood. For a while, everyone who read a draft seemed to question the wisdom of that decision. But Ozeki’s deft and gorgeous layering of two unrelated stories reassured me that it could be done; I just had to figure out how.
I also returned to Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina whenever I struggled with writing violent scenes — her power and assurance in writing domestic violence is legendary. I blocked out some of those scenes in her book to learn from her, though it was harrowing to read them again.
What books are on your nightstand now?
I have a copy of Ruth Ozeki’s The Book of Form and Emptiness by my bedside – it’s a doorstop so I’m waiting for a time when I can really get in there and savor it without interruptions. I’ve just started Karen Outen’s debut Dixon’s Descent and am appreciating her treatment of sibling relationships so much. I’m also dipping in and out of a beautiful essay collection about absence and grief from a couple of years ago — Patrice Gopo’s Autumn Song. And I’d be lying if I didn’t include the cozy reads that are always on my nightstand, too — at the moment I’m re-reading some of Diana Wynne Jones’ Chrestomanci series as bedtime stories. Better than a weighted blanket to calm my debut book release nerves!