Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo
(Format used for this read: Audiobook)
I always have *at least* two books I am reading at once.
Sometimes when I tell people this, they are like “How do you keep up with what is happening? Do you ever get them mixed up?”
Here is the thing….when I make my reading selections I always make sure that I have one nonfiction book for learning/growth and one fiction book purely for entertainment.
I don’t have the same type of genre or topic happening simultaneously during my readings.
Because if I did, I ABSOLUTELY would confuse myself …I ain’t THAT great of a multitasker🤣
Not too long ago I was looking for suggestions for some nonfiction book ideas…..so I asked some peeps in a FB group chat I am in.
I am part of the volunteer moderator team for the Be The Bridge Facebook group.
If you aren’t familiar with the tremendous organization Be the Bridge, check it out here:
You can also request to join our FB community page here:
https://m.facebook.com/groups/777770605611397
I am so lucky to serve alongside this grace filled, Spirit led and tremendously diverse team….
We have gotten to know each other online thru our group FB chat….we go thru our moderator duties of course but we also discuss ALL other kinds of things …current events, music, food, our childhoods, and entertainment recommendations.
Not only have I learned from and lamented alongside these beautiful people, I have also been encouraged by and laughed with them a whole lot too ❤ I’m not able to participate in the many discussions as often as I would like to, but when I am, my heart is always blessed in some way.
One of my new moderator friends, Martha, recommended this book to me. I was on the hunt for a nonfiction find to learn from and this was one she suggested. Another moderator, Kristy, quickly chimed in with agreement.
So I added the title to my library wait list immediately!
Here is the official summary:
“In this 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, a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport.
As India starts to prosper, the residents of Annawadi are electric with hope. Abdul, an enterprising teenager, sees “a fortune beyond counting” in the recyclable garbage that richer people throw away. Meanwhile Asha, a woman of formidable ambition, has identified a shadier route to the middle class. With a little luck, her beautiful daughter, Annawadi’s “most-everything girl,” might become its first female college graduate. And even the poorest children, like the young thief Kalu, feel themselves inching closer to their dreams. But then Abdul is falsely accused in a shocking tragedy; terror and global recession rock the city; and suppressed tensions over religion, caste, sex, power, and economic envy turn brutal.
With intelligence, humor, and deep insight into what connects people to one another in an era of tumultuous change, Behind the Beautiful Forevers, based on years of uncompromising reporting,carries the reader headlong into one of the twenty-first century’s hidden worlds—and into the hearts of families impossible to forget. “
The writing and reporting in this book are fascinating…because even though this is a nonfiction book, it totally reads like fiction.
I don’t think I’ve ever read any nonfiction written in this manner before…it was immensely powerful and astonishingly intriguing.
I think the author is a masterful storyteller and exceptional journalist.
She told the stories of the people of Annawadi in a honest, authentic, and honoring way. She does not diminish their dignity or exploit their hardships…she writes their truths authentically and respectfully…..
(BUT….I was feeling some kinda weird way that she made a bunch of money publishing this book and won a bunch of prizes….but I’ll get more into that in a minute….)
Because of the unique way she writes this book more like a novel than a piece of journalism, I had to constantly remind myself that the people she was writing about were REAL PEOPLE in a REAL PLACE…not made up characters in a pretend world.
There are A LOT of people and names in this book….so many that I wish I would have read it in paper form instead of listening on audio because I felt like I needed to go back to remember who was who and whom was related to whom and what person did what to another person.
On the other hand, the narrator for this audiobook was GREAT and I felt really added to the experience of the book.
So either way you go with format for this read, you’re good.
Martha described this book as haunting…and I absolutely agree with her adjective.
The Annawadi slum is located right next to the Mumbai airport and the 5 star luxury hotels that attract tourists from all over the world.
In one place, people drive designer cars, host elaborate events, fly first class and eat fancy gourmet meals. Then just a short walk away, people are living where there is no access to clean water and sometimes even shelter, scavenge trash to sell just to be able to barely survive, and have to fight off rat bites as they sleep.
The extreme comparison is a disturbing and heartbreaking reality….. and shows the effects of colonization, systemic corruption and class disadvantages.
You can see a quick glimpse in Annawadi in this video clip:
I was shocked at the many layers of corruption I read about…in the police force, the medical care, and even among community leaders. The depth and breadth of it was mind blowing.
This book is informative, alarming, heart breaking, and convicting.
The people in Annawadi have a tremendous capacity for strength, resilience and innovation. While so much of their daily lives is a struggle, they still find ways to push on, to search for joy, to care for each other. This also was mind blowing in an entirely different way.
Reading this book softens your heart, calls you to action and makes you really consider your impact in our global community…it really makes you think about how you are valuing every single human life and how aware you are of what is happening in the world.
So often our vision is limited to the teensy tiny corner we occupy on Earth that we become blind to so much that is going on everywhere else.
I read an interview the author did with NPR and she spoke about why she wrote about what she did:
“Often in journalism, stories about the poor began with a reporter going to an NGO and saying, ‘Tell me about the good work you’re doing, and let me follow you, and maybe if you could just pick out some real success stories, I’ll write about them.’ I think that those kind of stories do an injustice to the enormous amount of creative and enterprising problem-solving that low-income people do for themselves, that most of the ways that people get out of poverty in the United States, in India and anywhere else I’ve ever been is through their own imaginations and their own fortitude.”
But….I read something else in that interview that had me feeling alllllll kinds of conflicted which I talked about above.
Let me tell you what she said that gave me pause before I discuss it more:
“When I first came to Annawadi, I explained that I was there to write about them and that the constrictions of my profession, which I try to adhere to, involve that I didn’t end up paying them for their stories. It’s a convention in my profession that I struggle with. But at the same time, I know that if I had gone to Annawadi and started handing out money to some people and not to others … it would have been a very disruptive thing.”
So listen yall….this author made a BUNCH of money from this book.
She made money off the stories of the Annawadi community….and did not reimburse them at the time.
I know some white American journalist lady coming up in there playing white savior and handing out cash to everyone is not going to solve any long term problems.
I know she wrote this book to raise awareness. She did an interview with Bill Gates in which he asked her “What do you hope people will do after they read the book?”
Her response:
“I love it when readers care about and want to help the specific families or communities I write about, but I also hope readers will step back and think about how important it is to improve the infrastructure of economic and educational opportunity. Not much is going to change for powerless people until people with more power grasp how difficult it is for smart, energetic low-income families to improve their lives, and how much human capability our planet squanders as a consequence. And while my years of reporting have made me skeptical of silver bullets and Six-Point-Solutions-to-End-All-Poverty, I’m with the Indian economist Amartya Sen in that, if we can’t have perfect solutions to profoundly complex problems, we can still make incremental improvements in public health, educational quality, governmental accountability, and other realms that will benefit poor families immensely, and allow the talents of more young people to take wing.”
But…she literally made thousands of dollars off of their stories.
Did their community receive any benefits or compensation afterwards?
I hopped on the Google to research…
I found an interview where Katherine Boo was asked is she remain engaged with the Annawadi community:
“My husband (Sunil Khilnani) and I are still engaged with the community, funding education, training and emergency aid to help families get through health and other crises. Some students have risen heroically to the challenge of good private schools — schools where even the guards at the gates make them feel unwelcome.”
In the same interview, she was asked if there was any “official response” to the book:
“While there was no single ‘official response,’ I was heartened when prominent officials engaged in the policy implications of the book, including the crucial question of how to make programs more accountable and keep funds for the poor out of the pockets of the political elite. Such conversations happened more than I expected.
As far as positive change at Annawadi: I’m reluctant to assert direct correlations, since other factors may have been at work, but there’s more water in the slum now, and politicians respond to residents’ urgent concerns more quickly than they did before. I’m also told that harassment by the police has waned because of a fear that illegal activity might be documented.”
So it appears that she is indeed using her monetary advantages to serve the community she wrote about.
But to be real….part of me is still side eyeing just a bit that THEIR stories of oppression and disadvantage gave HER success and privileges…
Maybe I’m just hella cynical and suspicious. But ya know…the history of white American people exploiting and oppressing others for their own benefit is quite lengthy and extensive so……🤷♀️
She wanted to give voice to this community and raise global awareness…which she did do…and there WERE positive effects.
So IDK…I am trying to push my side eye aside…..
ANYWAY….
This book was extremely well written, tremendously informative, and I am grateful Martha suggested I read it.
I found myself researching the country of India after finishing to continue learning more about the country as a whole.
HIGHLY recommend this book, yall.