Author: Katherine Boo
Type: Non-Fiction
Genre: Non-Fiction about India
Series: No
Copyright: 2012
Publisher: Random House
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Summary: From Good Reads.
From Pulitzer Prize-winner Katherine Boo, a landmark work of narrative nonfiction that tells the dramatic and sometimes heartbreaking story of families striving toward a better life in one of the twenty-first century’s great, unequal cities.
In this brilliantly written, fast-paced book, based on three years of uncompromising reporting, a bewildering age of global change and inequality is made human.
Annawadi is a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport, and as India starts to prosper, Annawadians are electric with hope. Abdul, a reflective and enterprising Muslim teenager, sees “a fortune beyond counting“ in the recyclable garbage that richer people throw away. Asha, a woman of formidable wit and deep scars from a childhood in rural poverty, has identified an alternate route to the middle class: political corruption. With a little luck, her sensitive, beautiful daughter—Annawadi’s “most-everything girl“—will soon become its first female college graduate. And even the poorest Annawadians, like Kalu, a fifteen-year-old scrap-metal thief, believe themselves inching closer to the good lives and good times they call “the full enjoy.”
But then Abdul the garbage sorter is falsely accused in a shocking tragedy; terror and a global recession rock the city; and suppressed tensions over religion, caste, sex, power and economic envy turn brutal. As the tenderest individual hopes intersect with the greatest global truths, the true contours of a competitive age are revealed. And so, too, are the imaginations and courage of the people of Annawadi.
With intelligence, humor, and deep insight into what connects human beings to one another in an era of tumultuous change, Behind the Beautiful Forevers carries the reader headlong into one of the twenty-first century’s hidden worlds, and into the lives of people impossible to forget.
Feelings:
I enjoyed reading Behind the Beautiful Forevers. At times it was an uplifting book and others it was devastating. Katherine Boo does an amazing job bring the lives of those living in Annawadi to life. I did spend time wondering how she knew all that she new but the end of the book gives some insight into her interviews and time spent in Annawadi which explained many of the questions I had about how she could possibly know the things she knew.
The glimpse of normal life in Annawadi might be shocking if we were to see it from a western eye, however, it does not seem abnormal when reading the book. Yes, most of the inhabitants of Annawadi dream of a better life for themselves and their families. The people the book follows can see the prosperity of their country all around them yet they cannot themselves access it.
To the scavengers the wall provided a vantage for looking for trash. For them what the rich discarded is their well being.
It interested him that from Airport Road, only the smoke plumes of Annawadi's cooking fires could now be seen. The airport people had erected tall, gleaming aluminum fences on the side of the slum that most drivers passed before turning into the international terminals. Drivers approaching the terminal from the other direction would see only a concrete wall covered with sunshine-yellow advertisements. The ads were for Italianate floor tiles, and the corporate slogan ran the walls the length: BEAUTIFUL FOREVER BEAUTIFUL FOREVER BEAUTIFUL FOREVER. (p. 36-37)
From 2007 to 2011 Katherine Boo followed the lives of those in Annawadi. During this time we witness hardships and injustice they see in the Indian justice system. The bribes and conflicts that arise because someone will not pay a bribe or they feel as though they are wronged. Corruption is part of life even though many look down on it. Corruption is scary in the forms it takes in this book but it seems this may be something an international community of ad givers may want to address before giving their money.
I would suggest this book to those trying to understand poverty and its pervasiveness in developing countries. This book doesn't offer a solution to slumdweller's poverty but it does have insights mostly provided by the individuals the book follows that might help them reduce their struggling to eat day to day.
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