September 2013 Book Selection
The Fairfax Library Book Discussion Group will meet Thursday, September 12th at
7 p.m. in the meeting room of the Fairfax Library to discuss our September book: Behind The Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo.
Discussion are below.
Here are some links for
additional background and information:
Coming up, we have the
following books to look forward to reading:
Thanks for reading with
us. I look forward to seeing you at the Fairfax Library.
Beth Bailey-Gates
Friends of the Fairfax
Library
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Behind the Beautiful
Forevers by Katherine Boo
1. Barbara Ehrenreich calls Behind the Beautiful Forevers “one
of the most powerful indictments of economic inequality I’ve ever read.” Yet
the book shows the world of the Indian rich–lavish Bollywood parties, an
increasingly glamorous new airport–almost exclusively through the eyes of
the Annawadians. Are they resentful? Are they envious? How does the wealth that
surrounds the slumdwellers shape their own expectations and hopes?
2. As Abdul works day and night with garbage, keeping his head
down, trying to support his large family, some other citydwellers think of him
as garbage, too. How does Abdul react to how other people view him? How would
you react? How do Abdul and his sort-of friend, Sunil, try to protect
themselves and sustain self-esteem in the face of other people’s contempt?
3. The lives of ordinary women– their working lives, domestic
lives, and inner lives–are an important part of Behind the Beautiful Forevers.
The author has noted elsewhere that she’d felt a shortage of such accounts in
nonfiction about urban India. Do women like Zehrunisa and Asha have more
freedom in an urban slum than they would have had in the villages where they
were born? What is Meena, a Dalit, spared by living in the city? What freedoms
do Meena, Asha, and Zehrunisa still lack, in your view?
4. Asha grew up in rural poverty, and the teenaged marriage
arranged by her family was to a man who drank more than he worked. In Annawadi,
she takes a series of calculated risks to give her daughter Manju a life far
more hopeful than that of other young women such as Meena. What does Asha lose
by her efforts to improve her daughter’s life chances? What does she gain? Were
Asha’s choices understandable to you, in the end?
5. The author has said elsewhere that while the book brings to
light serious injustices, she believes there is also hope on almost every
single page: in the imaginations, intelligence and courage of the people she
writes about. What are the qualities of a child like Sunil that might flourish
in a society that did a better job of recognizing his capacities?
6. When we think of corruption, the examples tend to be drawn
from big business or top levels of government. The kind of corruption Behind
the Beautiful Forevers show us is often described as “petty”. Do you agree with
that characterization of the corruption Annawadians encounter in their daily
lives? Why might such corrruption be on the increase as India grows wealthier
as a nation? The author states: “The effect of corruption I find most
underacknowledged is a contraction not of economic possibility but of our moral
universe.” Is corruption an economic problem or a moral problem?
7. Does Asha have a point when she argues that something isn’t
wrong if the powerful people say that it’s right? How does constant exposure to
corruption change a person’s internal understanding of right and wrong?
8. Shortly before Abdul is sent to juvenile jail, a major
newspaper runs a story about the facility headlined: “Dongri Home is a Living
Hell.” Abdul’s experience of Dongri is more complex, though. How does being
wrenched away from his work responsibilities at Annawadi change his
understandings of the hardships of other people? Are terms like liberty and
freedom understood differently by people who live in different conditions?
9. Fatima’s neighbors view her whorling rages, like her bright
lipsticks, as free comic entertainments. How has her personality been shaped by
the fact that she has been defined since birth by her disability–very literally
named by it? Zehrunusa waivers between sympathy for and disapproval of her
difficult neighbor. In the end, did you?
10. Zehrunisa remembers a time when every slumdweller was
roughly equal in his or her misery, and competition between neighbors didn’t
get so out of hand. Abdul doesn’t know whether or not to believe her account of
a gentler past. Do you believe it? Might increased hopes for a better life have
a dark as well as a bright side?
11. Many Annawadians–Hindu, Muslim, and Christian– spend less
time in religious observance than they did when they were younger, and a pink
temple on the edge of the sewage lake goes largely unused. In a time of
relative hope and constant improvisation for the slumdwellers, why might
religious practice be diminishing? What role does religious faith still play in
the slumdwellers’ lives?
12. Who do you think had the best life in the book, and why?
13. In the Author’s Note Katherine Boo emphasizes the volatility
of an age in which capital moves quickly around the planet, government supports
decline, and temporary work proliferates. Had the author followed the families
of Annawadi for only a few weeks or months, would you have come away with a
different understanding of the effects of that volatility? Does uncertainty
about their homes and incomes change how Annawadians view their neighbors? Does
economic uncertainty affect relationships where you live?
14. At one point in the book, Abdul takes to heart the moral of
a Hindu myth related by The Master: Allow your flesh to be eaten by the eagles
of the world. Suffer nobly, and you’ll be rewarded in the end. What is the
connection between suffering and redemption in this book? What connections
between suffering and redemption do you see in your own life? Are the sufferers
ennobled? Are the good rewarded in the end?
15. In the Author’s Note, Katherine Boo says
she was looking to read a book that answered certain questions: What is the
infrastructure of opportunity in this society? Whose capabilities are given
wing by the market and a government’s economic and social policy? Whose
capabilities are squandered? By what means might that ribby child grow up to be
less poor? Does her book answer these questions?
