Tag: Nonfiction

Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo

~ Jennifer @ The Relentless Reader ~ 22 Comments
Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo
Publisher: Random House
Publication Date: February 2012
Categories: Asia, India, Poverty
Source: Library book
Description:

In this brilliantly written, fast-paced book, based on three years of uncompromising reporting, a bewildering age of global change and inequality is made human.
 
Annawadi is a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport, and as India starts to prosper, Annawadians are electric with hope. Abdul, a reflective and enterprising Muslim teenager, sees “a fortune beyond counting” in the recyclable garbage that richer people throw away. Asha, a woman of formidable wit and deep scars from a childhood in rural poverty, has identified an alternate route to the middle class: political corruption. With a little luck, her sensitive, beautiful daughter—Annawadi’s “most-everything girl”—will soon become its first female college graduate. And even the poorest Annawadians, like Kalu, a fifteen-year-old scrap-metal thief, believe themselves inching closer to the good lives and good times they call “the full enjoy.” 
 
But then Abdul the garbage sorter is falsely accused in a shocking tragedy; terror and a global recession rock the city; and suppressed tensions over religion, caste, sex, power and economic envy turn brutal. As the tenderest individual hopes intersect with the greatest global truths, the true contours of a competitive age are revealed. And so, too, are the imaginations and courage of the people of Annawadi. 
 
With intelligence, humor, and deep insight into what connects human beings to one another in an era of tumultuous change, Behind the Beautiful Forevers carries the reader headlong into one of the twenty-first century’s hidden worlds, and into the lives of people impossible to forget.

My Thoughts:

Behind the Beautiful Forevers is stunning.

Boo writes about the extreme poverty of a particular slum in Mumbai. The struggle to overcome religious differences, alcoholism and the lack of jobs are day-to-day issues for the residents of the Annawadi settlement  Education is almost non-existent. Raw sewage flows throughout the slum. Suicide is common. Government corruption is rampant.

Boo spent a number of years embedded in the Annawadi slum and she writes about the people there realistically and with compassion.The hope that these people have is inspiring. They work hard and believe that they are one lucky break away from making it.

This book is an eye-opener that I can’t recommend highly enough.

A conversation on Twitter led Nadia (from A Bookish Way of Life) and I to read this book at the same time. Check out here review HERE!

With or Without You by Domenica Ruta

~ Jennifer @ The Relentless Reader ~ 14 Comments
With or Without You by Domenica Ruta
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Publication Date: February 2013
Categories: Personal Memoir, Family Relationships
Source: Random House 

Description:
Domenica Ruta grew up in a working-class, unforgiving town north of Boston, in a trash-filled house on a dead-end road surrounded by a river and a salt marsh. Her mother, Kathi, a notorious local figure, was a drug addict and sometimes dealer whose life swung between welfare and riches, and whose highbrow taste was at odds with her hardscrabble life. And yet she managed, despite the chaos she created, to instill in her daughter a love of stories. Kathi frequently kept Domenica home from school to watch such classics as the Godfather movies and everything by Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen, telling her, “This is more important. I promise. You’ll thank me later.” And despite the fact that there was not a book to be found in her household, Domenica developed a love of reading, which helped her believe that she could transcend this life of undying grudges, self-inflicted misfortune, and the crooked moral code that Kathi and her cohorts lived by.
 
With or Without You is the story of Domenica Ruta’s unconventional coming of age—a darkly hilarious chronicle of a misfit ’90s youth and the necessary and painful act of breaking away, and of overcoming her own addictions and demons in the process. In a brilliant stylistic feat, Ruta has written a powerful, inspiring, compulsively readable, and finally redemptive story about loving and leaving.

My Thoughts:

There’s nothing like a memoir by a gal with a messed up childhood to make you feel better about the way you were raised. This wasn’t the most horrendous upbringing I’ve ever read about but With or Without You made me grateful for my “normal” family.

There’s neither structure nor routine to life with Kathi. Domenica isn’t sure from one day to the next what mood she’ll find her mother in. Will she be protective and loving? Will she be out of control with anger? 

Besides the mental illness her mother was obviously suffering from there was also drug addiction. And hey, who wouldn’t share their OxyContin pills with their young daughter? 

Here you go sweetie, love ya!

While With or Without You was beautifully written I do have to mention a couple of problems I had with it. The last quarter of the book seemed a bit rushed and disjointed. Domenica suffered from addiction issues of her own but managed to graduate from college with exceptional grades, earning an MFA. I would have liked to hear more about how she pulled that off.

Despite those few issues I would absolutely recommend  this book. Read it.