What can you learn about writing about culture from these pages?
It is an important thing in cultural writing to literally become the person you are writing about. Katherine Boo never once mentions herself or how she accumulated the information she speaks about, save for in the author's note. Instead, she tells these peoples' story the way it is: as a story. This way, the reader feels less like they are observing from the author's omniscient point of view, and more like they are actually immersed in the culture that the author is describing. The people she interviewed may have been annoyed at her technique of repeatedly asking the same questions, but it effectively gave her each detail, including facts that may have been forgotten in the first or second telling of the story, then remember in the tenth or eleventh telling. Coming through in this story is not only the personalities of the people in this culture that Boo met, but also the personalities of the people they know. For example, on page 15, Boo mentions that Abdul once saw a boy's hand cut off by the machine he worked with. Instead of crying out or screaming, his eyes filled with tears as he realized he could no longer make a living. He didn't bemoan that, either, however- instead, he apologized to the owner of the machine. "'Sa'ab, I'm sorry,' he'd said to the man in white. 'I won't cause you any problems by reporting this. You will have no trouble from me'" (Boo 15). This quote shows not only the submissive nature of this boy in particular, but of the entire culture, and how they live in the shadow of the sa'abs, the rich people. In chapter two, the writing not only characterizes Asha, but also the person she aspired to be like: the Corporator. Asha's mannerisms are often copies of his own, such as making people wait for her presence, and not dressing to make them feel less important, and in turn her/him more important. Again, Boo gives the whole culture more character by not just describing one person's life, but the whole lifestyle, in this case, the corrupt way some people try to reach ranks like slumlord and Corporators. Boo's writing shows us that by writing from the point of view of the people actually in the culture, the essence of said culture is captured better through the stories and descriptions of people and the people they know, through their eyes.
What can you learn about writing in a more general sense from Katherine Boo's writing?
As mentioned on the inside cover flap (in the hardback edition),, "Behind the Beautiful Forevers" is a fast-paced book. At first, you do not notice it, but slowly, I've realized just how much is covered in mere pages. The style of writing Boo employs is interesting. In chapter one, she seems to be describing an ordinary day for Abdul. He is sorting through trash, attempting to finish his work before boys started playing cricket in his area. In short asides, however, Boo also describes several things, such as Abdul's perception of how people fit together: "It made sense to Abdul that in a polyglot city, people would sort themselves as he sorted his garbage, like with like" (Boo 13). She also takes a moment to describe the atmosphere of the slum, stemming simply from noting that Rahul was above Abdul as he worked: "…above Abdul, Rahul was… on another tree… The leaves of the tree were gray, like many things in Annawadi, on account of sand and gravel blowing in from a concrete plant nearby" (Boo 14). She goes on to describe breathing problems in the area, an important detail that helps readers visualize this place she is telling the story about, something that one wouldn't normally expect to hear in a description of a person's average day, and yet it makes perfect sense now that it is there in the story. Boo writes this book with major and minor details, all which collaborate to build a mental picture of the story being told, so audience's aren't just reading a story, but actually living it through the eyes of the people that live it themselves, an interesting vicarious experience.
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