In Celebration of Outside Women

Join AAWW for a powerful celebration of Roohi Choudhry’s incandescent debut novel Outside Women, a sweeping, century-spanning story of feminist resistance, radical kinship, and migrant solidarity.

Choudhry will be joined by Mona Eltahawy (The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls) and Yashica Dutt (Coming Out as Dalit) for an evening of readings and conversation on building transnational feminist community and writing toward justice. Together, these three writers—whose work has shaped movements across borders—will reflect on the themes of Outside Women: finding courage in sisterhood, defying silence across generations, and the revolutionary possibilities of standing together.

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Set in South Africa, Pakistan, and New York City, Outside Women weaves together the lives of Sita, an indentured laborer in 1890s Durban, and Hajra, a Pakistani scholar in exile a century later, each forced to reckon with the cost of fighting for a stranger. Lyrical, gripping, and deeply tender, Outside Women is “riveting… an incisive story of how change happens” (Publishers Weekly) and a radiant exploration of what it means to risk everything for liberation.

Don’t miss this urgent and electric evening with three of the boldest feminist voices writing today.

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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 interfaith groups, schools, libraries, and community organizations. Her stories and essays have appeared in Ploughshares, Callaloo, Longreads, and the Kenyon Review. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Find out more at roohichoudhry.com.

Mona Eltahawy is a feminist author, commentator and disruptor of patriarchy. Her latest book is an anthology on menopause she has edited called Bloody Hell! And Other Stories: Adventures in Menopause from Around the World. Her first book Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution (2015) targeted patriarchy in the Middle East and North Africa and her second The Seven Necessary Sins For Women and Girls (2019) took her disruption worldwide. Her commentary has appeared in media around the world and she is founder and editor-in-chief of the newsletter FEMINIST GIANT.

Yashica Dutt is the award-winning author of Coming Out as Dalit, an internationally acclaimed journalist and among the leading global voices on caste. Dutt's work has been published in the New York Times, Foreign Policy and The Atlantic, and she has been featured on the BBC, The Guardian and PBS Newshour. Her writing has been part of Pen America’s India at 75 anthology that featured prominent Indian writers looking back on India’s history in its 75th year of independence, and a collection titled Our Freedoms: Essays and Stories from India’s Best Writers. Coming Out as Dalit was published in the South Asian subcontinent in 2019, and a revised and the updated edition was released by Beacon Press in 2024. It is an enduring best-seller and is currently part of the curriculum in over 50 colleges and universities worldwide, including Harvard University, UC Berkeley, and UC Davis. Dutt is currently working on her second book on caste in the United States, also commissioned by Beacon Press. She graduated from Columbia Journalism School

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COMMUNITY CARE & ACCESSIBILITY

At AAWW, the safety and comfort of our community is our top priority. We invite you to practice intentionality and care in your behavior and language when engaging with our programs and with each other. Violence of any kind, including but not limited to racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, ageism, class or casteism, bigotry or bias toward religion or faith, or any action or assault against marginalized identities, is not tolerated. Those who bring harm to our community in person or online are not welcome, and will be asked to exit the space.

We highly encourage all in person guests to take a COVID test at home prior to the event.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Xenana Projects, 154 Scott Avenue, Brooklyn, United States