Description: "Would you risk your own life to pursue justice for a stranger? Two migrant women-separated by geographies and generations-face this same devastating choice. Lured away from her home in 1890s India, Sita is brought to South Africa as an indentured servant-one among millions funneled by the British to replace the recently abolished slave trade. One hundred years later, Hajra, a Pakistani scholar, is forced to flee her home in Peshawar after witnessing a violent act meant to target her. In New York City, she loses herself in academic research until she comes face-to-face with a photo of a laughing, defiant young woman brandishing a banner in protest. Inexorably drawn to this woman, Hajra travels to South Africa to learn more and unknowingly traces Sita's path. With raw imagery and rich sensory detail, Roohi Choudhry's incandescent debut novel Outside Women intertwines the narratives of two women painfully yet valiantly carving their existences outside of patriarchal and colonial spaces as they search for kinship and strength in solidarity"--
Brief description: Roohi Choudhry was born in Pakistan and grew up in southern Africa. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan and is the recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship and residencies at Hedgebrook and Djerassi. She worked as a researcher in criminal justice reform and public health, wrote for the United Nations, and facilitates creative writing workshops for community organizations. Her stories and essays have appeared in Ploughshares, Callaloo, Longreads, and the Kenyon Review. Find her online at roohichoudhry.com.
Review Quotes:
Outside Women is a powerful and beautifully braided novel of personal and political history. Choudhry traverses continents and centuries with conviction and subtlety in this striking debut.
--Peter Ho Davies, author of The Fortunes and The Welsh Girl