Katherine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers (100% Complete)

Manju narrating a passage from the book about her life
india.nydailynews.com/newsarticle/4f5518e60169a5345c000000

As my reading continued, I encountered towering corruption, dying people ignored, and suicide. Near the end, while an uppercity animal rights group is able to rally a lot of support for horses kept in the slums, the people of the slums could not change their situations. Instead, "powerless individuals blamed other powerless individuals for what they lacked. Sometimes they tried to destroy one another. Sometimes, like Fatima, they destroyed themselves in the process. When they were fortunate, like Asha, they improved their lots by beggaring the life chances of other poor people" (237). They could not rally together to make change, something that the author could not understand before she researched this book. I feel that while it is unfortunate that the slumdwellers did/do not feel they can band together for a common cause, it is understandable; Their lives have very little certainty and they have very little means. Most of their time is spent scraping up what they need to live for one day. If I put myself in their place, I can imagine I would feel like I didn't have much time to think about anyone other than my own family. It would be hard to put aside immediate needs in favor of addressing the bigger ones.

I think I understand the author's purpose with this book now. She writes "Ten years ago, I fell in love with an Indian man and gained a country. He urged me not to take it at face value" (247). Until reading this book, I did not look deeply into India. I did not know what the true conditions are like in its cities. Boo says that there had been a shortage of nonfiction about India, and through her book, she has created some. She believes "that better arguments, maybe even better policies, get formulated when we know more about ordinary lives" (251).

So while her book presents an almost endless list of India's problems (I found myself saying "Really?! That too?") and no plan of action for improvement, I think that's okay. We need to hear about what's wrong before anything can be done. Awareness is the first step for any type of change. I don't know that I would have adolescents read this entire book unless they were very interested. I still feel depressed after reading it and I think excerpts are enough to get them familiar with slum life. I think I would use this as nonfiction (that reads like a fictional story, but all the names, places, and events are true to life) to accompany other reading about poverty - to connect fictionally impoverished characters across time  (to the modern) or space (the similarities and differences between the impoverished in different nations). The link to the article above will provide some nice visuals for students - pictures of the actual slum and the people in it.