Book Club: Behind The Beautiful Forevers
Last year, my colleague organized a monthly book club. The parameters: 1)We will read The New York Times ten best books of the year, 2)members can participate freely depending on their taste and calendar, 3)the facilitator role will rotate, and 4)meetings are held in a public venue so nobody has to clean their house. The group chose to hold meetings at Global Market, a colorful hub in the center of Minneapolis with dozens of food options and diverse company.
Since my book conversations are primarily with eleventh graders, I decided it would be in my best interest to join the club this year and recalibrate my literary speak amongst a more intellectual crowd. Our first book was Katherine Boo's Behind The Beautiful Forevers. Heading to Thursday's meeting, I wasn't sure what (or who) to expect. I found myself getting nervous; I rarely talk shop with adults! I knew my colleague ran with a pretty bright circle as he is a former professor of a nearby liberal arts college. Folks introduced themselves- former educators, professors, principals, and a nurse- before diving into the book.
The Book
Behind The Beautiful Forevers is not a complicated book in form- Boo weaves together true stories of Mumbai slum dwellers collected from several years of ethnographic interviews in Annawadi, a slum beside the Mumbai airport. The stories reveal a level of chaos, corruption, and hope/hopelessness that the western world generally overlooks...or takes for granted. Behind The Beautiful Forevers reads like a novel filled with visceral images, almost all associated with death. This repetition reminded me of Nicholas Kristof's Half The Sky, and I found that I needed to swallow the grimness in small doses.
Thursday's book club certainly brought to light contradictions that bubble up from beneath Annawadi's sewage lake and flood into the fancy hotels on the other side of the wall (the very same wall with the advertised message- "The Beautiful Forevers"). The corrupt politics that the slum dwellers despise are the same politics that bring a determined few a college education. In this way, corruption can be seen as opportunity to the poor. I suppose this is where the "hope" in the subtitle ("Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity") rests. As a book club member noted, some of the characters have hope initially, but hope drains as Mumbai remains in a constant state of flux.
Another book clubber pointed out another contradiction- the invisibility of author Katherine Boo in the narrative. Despite the intensity and duration of her time in Annawadi, Boo is glaringly absent. She describes her research and writing methodology in the author's note, but we are still left to wonder about the extent of bias and artistic license in the text. If Boo prides herself on creating awareness through the story of an individual, it seems odd that she is comfortable speaking for an Annawadian slum dweller. I am left asking: Is it ever okay to tell another's story without revealing our own bias and/or relationship with that individual?
Across oceans, it is extremely easy to generalize. I don't possess a great understanding of Mumbai's history, politics, or economics. Slumdog Millionaire was my central reference up until this point. Reading Behind The Beautiful Forevers, I found myself thankful that I was born in the United States. A wiser book clubber challenged this perspective. He asked, "Is it really reasonable to infer that we are less corrupt in the U.S.? Maybe we are as corrupt, it is just systemized differently here." Reading and discussing this book forced me to reconsider my own biases.
Since my book conversations are primarily with eleventh graders, I decided it would be in my best interest to join the club this year and recalibrate my literary speak amongst a more intellectual crowd. Our first book was Katherine Boo's Behind The Beautiful Forevers. Heading to Thursday's meeting, I wasn't sure what (or who) to expect. I found myself getting nervous; I rarely talk shop with adults! I knew my colleague ran with a pretty bright circle as he is a former professor of a nearby liberal arts college. Folks introduced themselves- former educators, professors, principals, and a nurse- before diving into the book.
The Book
Behind The Beautiful Forevers is not a complicated book in form- Boo weaves together true stories of Mumbai slum dwellers collected from several years of ethnographic interviews in Annawadi, a slum beside the Mumbai airport. The stories reveal a level of chaos, corruption, and hope/hopelessness that the western world generally overlooks...or takes for granted. Behind The Beautiful Forevers reads like a novel filled with visceral images, almost all associated with death. This repetition reminded me of Nicholas Kristof's Half The Sky, and I found that I needed to swallow the grimness in small doses.
Thursday's book club certainly brought to light contradictions that bubble up from beneath Annawadi's sewage lake and flood into the fancy hotels on the other side of the wall (the very same wall with the advertised message- "The Beautiful Forevers"). The corrupt politics that the slum dwellers despise are the same politics that bring a determined few a college education. In this way, corruption can be seen as opportunity to the poor. I suppose this is where the "hope" in the subtitle ("Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity") rests. As a book club member noted, some of the characters have hope initially, but hope drains as Mumbai remains in a constant state of flux.
Another book clubber pointed out another contradiction- the invisibility of author Katherine Boo in the narrative. Despite the intensity and duration of her time in Annawadi, Boo is glaringly absent. She describes her research and writing methodology in the author's note, but we are still left to wonder about the extent of bias and artistic license in the text. If Boo prides herself on creating awareness through the story of an individual, it seems odd that she is comfortable speaking for an Annawadian slum dweller. I am left asking: Is it ever okay to tell another's story without revealing our own bias and/or relationship with that individual?
Across oceans, it is extremely easy to generalize. I don't possess a great understanding of Mumbai's history, politics, or economics. Slumdog Millionaire was my central reference up until this point. Reading Behind The Beautiful Forevers, I found myself thankful that I was born in the United States. A wiser book clubber challenged this perspective. He asked, "Is it really reasonable to infer that we are less corrupt in the U.S.? Maybe we are as corrupt, it is just systemized differently here." Reading and discussing this book forced me to reconsider my own biases.
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