In reading Behind the
Beautiful Forevers, I took out a unique sense of writing. Katherine Boo did
a really nice job recreating the situations that these people found themselves in.
It was really quite astonishing. As well, she incorporated a broader sense of
what was going on in India’s culture at the time. It is hard to pinpoint her
exact technique in accomplishing this, but the flow was effortless as a reader.
That, I believe, is the key point in writing about actual events: to guide the
interest on what’s important and still maintaining a narrative flow.
The most important theme I took out of the book was the
overarching reality of our privileged culture in America. There is a tremendous
difference between poor life here and poor life in Indian slums. It’s not as
though we have cast the poor out of our sphere of importance, nor have we taken
advantage of their situation as to step on them to get what the richer want.
The rest of society in America still treats the poor like humans, not like
garbage as India does. I couldn't find the specific page numbers where this
would be exemplified, but there were multiple times throughout the book where
Boo pointed out that boys like Sunil, Abdul, and Kalu were considered no more
than garbage to the upper-societal members.
Otherwise, I really have no criticisms. Overall, I thoroughly
enjoyed reading Boo’s book. It was insightful, entertaining, captivating, and knowledgeable.
She did a great job pulling the reader in as well as explaining different aspects
of the culture.
Haley Laurelle Martin
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