Behind the Beautiful Forevers

I went to hear Katherine Boo as part of our library's "Author! Author!" series and was just bowled over by her levels of compassion, commitment, dedication, and determination. If I had not gone to see and hear her, and if we had not selected this book for our book group read, I am not sure I could have finished this book. It was that hard. Boo had previously reported on some of the most disadvantaged communities in the U. S. winning a Pulitzer prize for her work. But after marrying an east Indian man, she felt she wanted to tell the story of the poor in that country (brief bio of Boo and her translators in the project are here). In spite of signficant health issues, she undertook this research in 2008. Boo spent 4+ years, for months at a time, in a small slum across from the Mumbai (India) airport, getting to know how the poorest people lived. Surrounded by towering luxury hotels, hidden behind billboards advertising flooring that would be "beautiful forever," the half acre of Annawadi was the center of life for over 3,000 human inhabitants, some goats, horses, pigs, and a lake of sewage. People survived by scavenging through garbage for recyclable materials, stealing, selling their bodies. Only a handful had regular jobs, and yet, according to government statistics, these people were not living in poverty. Many had no roof over their heads, never knew when they would eat next, could not rely on any government help, health care providers, or even so-called charities to offer them the most basic kinds of assistance. Not only did the rich prey on the poor, but so did the not so rich and the poor themselves. Boo was determined not to interfere in people's lives in her efforts to truthfully document was their existence was life and how they coped, but that meant she saw people (including children) beaten and sent to jail for crimes they did not commit, witnessed corruption at every level of government and in NGO's, and experienced the deaths of people she knew and had come to care about. It's not clear what separated those who chose to survive at any cost from those who gave up all hope and killed themselves by, for example, eating rat poison. Everyone should read this National Book Award winner, but be prepared for a painful journey.
Some great photos are on this website.
An interview with Boo was done on NPR.
There are numerous excellent reviews: Washington Post, The New York Times, The Guardian, and The Boston Globe, to name just a few.