Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Behind The Beautiful Forevers Pages 1-50 Response


What can you learn about writing about culture from these pages?


I think that even within these first 50 pages, I have gained a lot of insight on how to write about culture. First, I think that it is important to remain completely unbiased in your writing. Katherine Boo does an excellent job of this in my opinion. It is important that you portray the culture as true as you can. You want to include every detail that you have available to you. However, when you present these details, it is important that you state them in unbiased position. By this I mean, you state the facts without any input of your own opinion. You want the reader to get the truest visual of the culture as possible, without clouding it with your own ideas. When your own ideas and opinions come into play, the visual of the culture is immediately affected for the reader. The reader will then unconsciously form your same opinions, when the goal is for them to create their own.
Secondly, I think it is great that Katherine Boo writes about the Annawadi culture through a story. I know everyone is different, but for me, just reading a history book can tend to get boring. I prefer reading that has something for me to latch onto, something for me to get lost in. I like how Katherine Boo is telling us about Annawadi, the culture, the people, etc. while also continuing a narrative. This way it feels to me as if I am just reading a story, but subconsciously I am also learning about the culture of Annawadi. It also helps that even the people I am reading about are real. Some books tend to show the real culture, but braided in with a fictional story line. Katherine Boo took enough time, and enough interviews to actually tell a true story of real people living in Annawadi. It makes the experience for the reader even better knowing that the characters we are reading about are in fact real people.

Jordyn Hunter

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