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Behind the Beautiful Forevers Life Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity Katherine Boo 9781400067558 Books

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Behind the Beautiful Forevers Life Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity Katherine Boo 9781400067558 Books

This is a very good, but very depressing book, especially once I got to the end and found it was not fiction, as I had assumed. Very good, but be prepared. This is not a book about happy endings. Katherine Boo does a masterful job documenting life in a Mumbai slum.


Tags : Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity [Katherine Boo] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. In this brilliant, breathtaking book by Pulitzer Prize winner Katherine Boo, a bewildering age of global change and inequality is made human through the dramatic story of families striving toward a better life in Annawadi,Katherine Boo,Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity,Random House,1400067553,Poverty,Sociology - Urban,Bombay (India) - Economic conditions - 21st century,Creative nonfiction.,Mumbai (India) - Economic conditions - 21st century,Poor;Bombay (India).,Poor;India;Mumbai.,Urban poor - India - Bombay,Urban poor - India - Mumbai,Asia - India & South Asia,Asian,Bombay,Central government policies,Creative nonfiction,Developing & Emerging Countries,GENERAL,General Adult,HISTORY Asia India & South Asia,HistoryAsia - India & South Asia,India,Non-Fiction,Reference General,SOCIAL SCIENCE Developing & Emerging Countries,SOCIAL SCIENCE Poverty & Homelessness,SOCIAL SCIENCE Sociology Urban,SOCIAL STRATIFICATION,Social Science,Social SciencePoverty & Homelessness,Sociology,Sociology - Urban,URBAN SOCIOLOGY,United States,Urban poor,Urban poor - India - Bombay,Urban poor - India - Mumbai,book club recommendations;pulitzer prize winning books;top biographies;national book award finalists;national book award winners;pulitzer prize winners;india;history;world history;history books;memoir;memoirs;biography;autobiography;narrative nonfiction;pulitzer prize;cultural studies;globalism;mumbai;politics;journalism;history of the world;environmentalism;sociology books;political books;indian politics;bombay;asian history;21st century;adult;anthropology;corruption;family;national book award,india; mumbai; journalism; politics; history; bombay; narrative nonfiction; memoir; cultural studies; biography; pulitzer prize; national book award finalists; national book award winners; pulitzer prize winners; world history; history books; memoirs; autobiography; globalism; history of the world; environmentalism; sociology books; political books; indian politics; asian history; 21st century; adult; anthropology; corruption; family; national book award; book club recommendations; pulitzer prize winning books; top biographies,Asia - India & South Asia,Developing & Emerging Countries,HISTORY Asia India & South Asia,HistoryAsia - India & South Asia,Reference General,SOCIAL SCIENCE Developing & Emerging Countries,SOCIAL SCIENCE Poverty & Homelessness,SOCIAL SCIENCE Sociology Urban,Social SciencePoverty & Homelessness,Bombay,Creative nonfiction,India,Urban poor,Social Stratification,Urban Sociology,Social Science,Sociology,Central government policies

Behind the Beautiful Forevers Life Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity Katherine Boo 9781400067558 Books Reviews

I am moved by this book. The increasing gap of wealth is a problem, and this well documented biography of life on the poor side of the fence is moving and disturbing, particularly because this trend seems to be escalating everywhere on the globe. The presentation is not judgmental. Instead, it is a window into the lives of the poor, their hopes, and their despair. Most readers have likely already imagined what this life is like, and their impressions will likely be consistent with what they find in this book. While reading the book, however, I learned that living this life has dimensions I had not thought to consider. I felt my knowledge was lifted from preconceived notions to being that of a witness. It is powerful.
I live in Brazil, a country of great social inequality, but even so the misery and cruelty shown in Behind the Beautiful Forevers is impressive. This work, winner of the 2012’s National Book Award and written by Pulitzer winner Katherine Boo, is the result of three years she spent in Annawadi, a slum in Mumbai, India.

The title is a reference to an outdoor of Italian luxury mosaics that faces the city’s modern international airport; and Annawadi is right behind, like a black humor joke. It is a place of hunger and constant disease. Where people sleep in the middle of trash and are bitten by rats during the night. Where the fight for survivor surfaces a greedy and cruel side in the neighbors, the police corruption and politics. A place where people supplement their meager diet with rats and frogs from a fetid lagoon. Annawadi shows the combination of the darkest side of globalization with the Indian cast system, defined in the book as “the most perfectly oppressive labor division system ever conceived”.

Most of the story revolves around a Muslim family in the place of Hindu majority. They are accused of being responsible for the suicide of a one-legged woman. She set fire to herself because the renovation of a shared wall made dust fall in her rice, and wanted to teach a lesson to the neighbors that went too far. The lawsuit against the father of the family and his son extends for years and becomes a nightmare, revealing an endemic corruption in each and every level of the official system. The Indian bureaucracy seems like a big machine to forget the poor.

“In the West, and among some in the Indian elite, this word, corruption, had purely negative connotations; it was seen as blocking India’s modern, global ambitions. But for the poor of a country where corruption thieved a great deal of opportunity, corruption was one of the genuine opportunities that remained.”

One day the Indian press does visit this place of poverty and injustice because of a death. Of a horse. A few days before, a garbage collector was ran over and died after pleading for help for hours in an active road. They took him out of there when he was already dead and the coroner determined – without an autopsy – that he died of tuberculosis, so that it wouldn’t smudge the region’s statistics.

The facts are amazing, and the execution of Behind the Beautiful Forevers too. The author used over a thousand hours of video, photographs and audio interviews to write the book. And Boo also has an incredible sensibility to find the right stories and the literary talent to transcribe them.

One of the best non-fiction books I have read. A deep immersion in an incredible theme, with incredible execution, multiple sources, long time of research. A must-read for journalists, those interested in modern India, or any human being.

I'm an American and I've lived and worked in West Africa for over 5 years (3 of them as a Peace Corps volunteer). I've found that it's incredibly challenging to peal away the cultural onion, especially in writing. It took me three years before I felt that I had a grasp on the rhythm and flow of the community I was living in, including the styles of communication (nonverbal communication, decoding indirectness), the practice of saving face, concepts of time, concepts of power, attitudes towards uncertainty, family life, the boundaries of friendship, decision-making when living in extreme poverty, etc. There is so much difference. You have to marinate in the difference to become aware of it, and then adopt the difference to understand it.

Katherine Boo is blessed with perception, awareness and understanding. I was blown away by her ability to capture the everyday judgements, intentions and attitudes of the residents of Annawadi and to provide an intimate looks into the oppression, corruption and abuse of poverty.
This is a very good, but very depressing book, especially once I got to the end and found it was not fiction, as I had assumed. Very good, but be prepared. This is not a book about happy endings. Katherine Boo does a masterful job documenting life in a Mumbai slum.