NerdFighters Book Club discussion

The first book John has suggested is 'Behind the Beautiful Forevers' by Katherine Boo - Katherine Book spent three years with the residents of Annawadi, a slum near Mumbai Airport, documenting the dreams, disappointments and inspired improvisations of the families who call the place home.

I'm actually really looking forward to this one. I haven't read a nonfiction book in an absurd number of years. Naturally it would be John's recommendation and the restarting of the nerdfighter book club that would get me to read one. Going to pick it up later today.

I am very excited to read this book and join this book club! Can't wait to start!

I just got my copy from the library! Very excited to start!

This book was remarkable!

I'm excited to read it!

Just put a hold on this one at the library. Hopefully it will be ready soon.

I'm almost half way through it and so far, I think it's pretty profound. (SPOILERS) Some of the people of Annawadi have so much hope for their futures and a very slim amount actually succeed - it's really quite sad. You have this people who think their lives are going somewhere because they've gotten a temp job cleaning toilets. Then you get the luckier people of Annawadi who have a steady job as a kindergarten teacher, even though she technically have the credentials, but in the case of the situation these people live in, she's extremely fortunate. Lastly, you have the girl who is in college who seemingly has the best chance at a steady career out of everyone in Annawadi, but because she's a woman she's afraid her years of studying will be for nothing and she will end up as a housewife because Annawadi "isn't ready for a female slumlord." And living in America, with corrupt newcasters and educational systems, sometimes you forget that this story is still considered current.

I just ordered the book yesterday and was just wondering if it was good :)
Is it a "tearjerking-book"?

Alicia wrote: "I just ordered the book yesterday and was just wondering if it was good :)
Is it a "tearjerking-book"?"
It's not exactly a crying kind of book. However there are some very moving parts, but they are written in a matter-of-a-fact way, I guess thats because its what really happened and there is no need to make it more sad than it already is. I don't think the book is mostly sad, for me I loved learning about all the different families and how they grew throughout the book.

Well it sounds awesome and I'm looking forward to read it! :)

I agree with Laura's comment and I noticed that thoroughly through out the book too. (SPOILERS)

All of the characters have hopes and dreams like everybody does. Zehrusina wants a new kitchen, Abdul wants an Ipod, Sunil wants to grow taller, Asha wants to be the slumlord, etc. Everybody has something they want to achieve and the triviality of those things (as they seem to me) shone light on their living conditions.
It might not be a tear-jerker in terms of hitting you with emotion like many stories do, but the undercurrents in the stories (some details and especially the deaths) are traumatic and jarring to say the least.

So I'm only on page 29 but I'm really struggling to get into this book. Seeing you guys post about it being profound, the fact that john recommended it and the fact that the deadline is only like 8 days away means I should probably force myself to really devote some time and get this thing read. Looking forward to discussions that will follow.

Andrew wrote: "So I'm only on page 29 but I'm really struggling to get into this book. Seeing you guys post about it being profound, the fact that john recommended it and the fact that the deadline is only like 8..."

It's really hard to get through the first something pages because it is depressing as hell. I have a hard time reading adult books in general because I'm too attached to middleschool/YA books and this book is the exact opposite of what I love. But I pushed through it, using my desire to include more adult books into my mental bookshelf and this being my first read with the Nerdfighters Bookclub and I ended up liking it. It definitely changes your perspective on things, makes you feel more thankful for what you have, and its definitely an eye opener to what it means to be in poverty according to the government officials.

Really enjoyed the book, but it was a bit of a struggle to read (constantly jumping from character to character/story to story) but worth it to stick thru, because the people in this book are amazing. Wrote a full review on my blog!

http://www.mylifeoutofalabcoat.com/20...

Cheers!

Ya I'm only about 30% of the way through but it's increasingly difficult to keep the characters straight. Most stories with a narrator tend to be easier to follow for me but I feel like the difference for this one is that the author isn't just telling one story. It seems like she's trying to tell THE story of Annawadi, but really she's telling a bunch of different stories of people in Annawadi. It's very hard to follow.

Yeah I had a hard time when I first started figuring out whose kids were whose but it gets easier

Feel so dirty after reading this... O__O Need like seven showers. My "inner child" ran away, maybe if I'm clean she will come back.

I really hope that comment isn't meaning what I think it means. If it does you have missed the entire point of the book.

*sigh* Pretty sure I didn't miss the "entire point". Feel dirty from all the corruption.

I actually really liked that the perspectives changed, it allowed for a more nuanced picture of Annawadi and you could really see that no one is just "evil". (Spoilers) Asha, while she inflicts so much pain and swindles people out of so much money, is trying to find better circumstances for herself in a world that didn't give her much to work with, and I honestly can't blame her. It's really rather tragic that the only way out of Annawadi seems to be on the demise of other extremely poor slum dwellers.

Oh okay sorry. My bad.
Yeah the amount of corruption was sickening.

Yeah, feels like nothing good will ever happen.

I'm also reading Swann's way(about a middle class 1800 century French boy). It was crazy just how different the children are in the two books.

What a great book! Check out my review at http://thecrreeds.blogspot.com/2014/0...

I really enjoyed this book, I was extremely impressed by the research done and the way the author presented her work. It really helped me, as a middle class American with little to no understanding of daily life in India/Mumbai/a slum in Mumbai to see the context in which all the people were operating and why they made the decisions they did. It helped me understand the corruption and obstacles that they faced and how those obstacles came to exist.

Often people oversimplify narratives and say that poor people act the way they do because they are "stupid" or "lazy", or in the case of foreign poor people "because that's just their culture/how they are." But in my experience, most people act in ways that are logical and advantageous given their circumstances. It's just that the (often privileged) outsiders don't understand the contexts in which the poor are operating. So, I really appreciate that this author was able to show the society and circumstances that these characters live in with such detail and thus offer Westerners and other outsiders some insight into their lives.

Agree about it being hard to keep names straight (still not 100% sure how Sunil fit into everything...), but I just made myself stop and memorize who the central characters were (Abdul, Asha, etc) and I got through fine without always remembering 100% who was who's child/neighbor.

I am really happy that there is such a book-club, though a bit sorry I have not found it earlier to be able to finish the book in time - this is what happens if I don't watch vlogbrothers' videos as soon as they are posted!
I will still read. Luckily there is a copy of it at our local library. (Good thing Romanians love English and I can find a lot of novels in the American Corner)

Andrew wrote: "Ya I'm only about 30% of the way through but it's increasingly difficult to keep the characters straight. Most stories with a narrator tend to be easier to follow for me but I feel like the differe..."

I felt the same way... It was a chore at the beginning. Almost done now. It gets more engaging and easier to follow as the story progresses. It is not a fun book, but it is enlightening.

When I started reading this, I thought that apathy from the outside world and circumstance would be the main factors in keeping the slum residents in poverty. I was surprised at how damaging corruption was. I knew that it would be a factor, I just didn't know what a huge role it would play.

Nadiact1000 wrote: "When I started reading this, I thought that apathy from the outside world and circumstance would be the main factors in keeping the slum residents in poverty. I was surprised at how damaging corrup..."
Yeah, corruption was a huge thing. I honestly had no idea that there was any sort of community like Annawadi in India, and it was a HUGE wake-up call. I could hardly believe it at some points. Like for instance when (spoiler) Abdul was asked to be paid by the Doctor so that he would be written down as 17 and not 20 years old was horrifying, and that wasn't even the worst of it. The whole book was amazingly sad and hopeless, but I loved it anyway.

Nothing is beautiful forever. It is the nature of the world that flowers fade and innocence is corrupted. That is true whether you live in a house with fancy floors or a cardboard box. What I liked about this book was that the characters were given their own lives and not presented as one-dimensional tragic victims. I think the author wanted to dispel the Western/middle class myth that the developing world's poor exist is some kind of perpetual, lazy misery. In fact, they have complex hopes, ambitions, joys and achievements. In Annawadi they start from a level of nothing we can't imagine here and they have no way to secure whatever material success they might achieve. The obstacles they face are not just from the outside but also from each other, just like any other community. The success of this book is the humanity of its characters.

I thought the book was great. It introduced us to the people of Annawadi without ever judging the characters therein and Boo does a brilliant job of giving us the ambitions and dreams of the various people there, highlighting the fact that the tremendous difficulty of their lives doesn't stop them from dreaming of a better one. Their little stories become so important over the course of the book, tales that no one really took the time to care about, but it becomes clear that each of them is as gripping as the last, and at times you struggle to remember everything in the book was actually witnessed out there in the real world. It's riveting, wonderfully well written and can be grim, but it's the resilience of those enduring the grimness that makes these people so heroic. They may fight with each other and plot to bring each other down, but as Memphis said, the humanity and indeed the imperfection of them is what gives the book its lasting impact.

I'm not jaded by all of these situations because I see a lot of these same people in the homeless community. There's a lot of people who live in unfortunate situations and only day to day. Also, just like in Annawadi, you can't solve that problem by throwing money at it either.

Olive wrote: "Nadiact1000 wrote: "When I started reading this, I thought that apathy from the outside world and circumstance would be the main factors in keeping the slum residents in poverty. I was surprised at..."
That really struck me too. Spoiler alert:
I was particularly struck by the cruelty, not just apathy that corruption caused. For instance, the police officers who beat Abdul. They didn't just throw him in jail; they actually tortured him. That cruelty was a calculated part of the corruption, used to extort more money from his mother. It was just a means to an end; as Abdul later realizes, the police officers need to extort money to feed their families.

After having read this book, I feel so much more fortunate to live the lifestyle I do, and while I think I might be "pinching pennies" so to speak, I still have the luxury of an education and the opportunity to better myself and make a better life for myself. I am so glad to have read this book and to have a better perspective of those who are not as lucky as I am.

A big take away for me is "now what"? I mean, how can I use my privilege to help? It seriously does not seem like I can do much due to the corruption. I want to help, but how?

I'm with ya Jess. It's tough to even know where to start.

Has anyone seen the author's interview on the Colbert Report? I found it here: http://thecolbertreport.cc.com/videos...

Katherine Boo said at one point: When I come back here, I think to myself if we really wanted to fix poverty we totally could in like half a second.

She also said, corruption takes so much opportunity from the poor, that corruption itself becomes one of the opportunities that remains.

I think that corruption and poverty can only be stopped by an earnest desire of many people towards being better. But what does it mean to be better? In my mind, it has to do with viewing the big picture, understanding actions and repercussions, and making active choices away from harming yourself or others.

So in my mind, the real purpose of education in schools is to in part promote moral cognition and practice. We should be in schools as children to be exposed to a greater world, to understand the social nature of our lives and learn how to think about each other instead of just ourselves.

But I'm not sure we can do that without slipping into things like indoctrination, and I'm not sure how to protect free will and independence too.

Dana

(I'm just brainstorming so don't lynch me if I say something stupid.)

You said, "But I'm not sure we can do that without slipping into things like indoctrination"

I totally get what your saying but on some level I think indoctrination may be what is needed. Not necessarily indoctrination of capitalism or a specific agenda but indoctrination of basic virtues: Compassion, honor, truth, etc... Currently it seems that the people of Annawadi have been indoctrinated with corruption, superstition, greed. They see these things as normal. Nothing changes in that society until that mindset changes and I think there needs to be a trickle down. It starts in the politics and education system and works its way down. It's a very broken system in need of a dramatic overhaul. Indoctrination of virtue might be a good place to start?

Gosh, this book tackles a lot of gray areas and challenges a lot of whatever standpoint I could think of!


What I got from the first four chapters
Growing up in the Philippines, I'm no stranger to poverty, but I was lucky to be born in a lower middle class family. I used to lump them as THE POOR. Like in the book, I see them as the shit between the roses. Yeah, monolithic indeed.

One thing I got from the book is that they have names; they have stories, they are valuable and worthy of love just as any other, and; I should be grateful for my own circumstances. My life's far from perfect, but to be able to be HERE - to read and comprehend and share my piece to all of you - is already a privilege.


A world where luck is a major player - how I make sense of that??
I have no idea why I was born where I was or why I have the privilege and opportunity I have. Though if I take advantage of the opportunities I am lucky enough to be presented with, a more privileged life may come my way, again if I’m lucky. But this awareness of my privileges (and, for them, the lack of) also brings a burden to me – will I just choose to come back to being ignorant or will I use it to help others less lucky than I?


What can we do?
I think some of you are also thinking that way. We felt the need to do SOMETHING to make their situation better. Which is admirable, but there's a danger of feeling powerless, overwhelmed and being too theoretical (all talk, no work) because, in the face of this huge problem of poverty and corruption ... honestly, what CAN we do?

I remember John Green's vid (Deserving) where he shared what he thought about luck, being deserving, about just being grateful for being alive and being aware, and I remember thinking "damn, he has a point." We can't save the world by ourselves and overnight, but we can start by making the world less sucky for someone.

Maybe start by being kind to everyone, especially those less privileged that us. As what this book showed me (and hopefully you as well), everyone is valuable and is fighting a battle we know nothing about.

And for the financially privileged, help John and Hank with their projects?
http://www.projectforawesome.com/

(Last note: The nerdfighter youtube comments are also very insightful!)

DFTBA

I don't try to make sense of luck. If I think about it too much, it leads me to great sadness and stress, a sort of existential attack on myself. I feel powerless. I really have a lot of experience in this area.

I do know that I could have been born in extreme poverty, but I thanfully wasn't. I could have been shot in a mall, but so far I've escaped such traumas. And I'm not aware of being plagued by any great mental or physical ailments, so that's great for me. Other people aren't so lucky at all. And this can be incredibly sad and unfair. I don't have a clue how to really help except to be kind and generous with my money and my time. I try not to get too swept away by materialism. I don't know sometimes if that's a good thing or not. Sometimes people take advantage of my generosity. And maybe the more things I buy, a poor child in India can help make it and eat another day... or maybe I'm just wasting money and contributing to global warming. It's hard to say.

I find that the only thing you can do in an unlucky world is to face it with optimism and goodness. The more people broaden their sympathies, even those in dire circumstances, the more their daily efforts can be better utilized. I can't help but think that even in the horrible slum of Annawadi, if all those poor people were kinder to each other and helped each other, they would be a lot better off.

This is why I think teaching morals in school is really important. I don't know how else to help get people to open up their hearts. How would people in Annawadi possibly put aside their own very real, very hard problems, and help each other? If there's no one else out there for them, at least they could rely on each other. There's no point in deriding each other and trying to steal each other's few riches.

So I guess one thing I can add to the levels of complexity that John Green mentioned is that of the complexity of who is fighting whom? It's not just rich vs poor, is it?

That lady Cynthia who yelled out when the police came to visit Abdul's family - "Why haven't the police arrested the rest of this family?" She was described as despizing Abdul's family because her own family garbage business failed.

And of course, most people seem to dislike the One Leg.

The people of Annawadi are not just fighting against their conditions, they're also fighting each other.

I just don't know what to think about the book. Between the narrative style of a supposedly non-fiction story and the sheer unbelievability of small facts (Abdul, the laconic garbage sorter, is unlikely to have told the author all of his thoughts and Fatima's thoughts directly before her death seem particularly difficult to obtain), it's very difficult to like. Plus, she paints the poor to be horrible, vicious people who refuse to help another living soul without payment, watch each other suffer and die in the street after being run over by cars, and set themselves on fire so that they can blame the neighbors. It's just outlandish. The reason nobody saves the guy with his late crushed is their own self preservation--which seems to be a pretty solid feature of all of these people--but Fatima has so little self-preservation, not to mention value of the only thing that makes her happy in life, the men who come to see her who assuredly won't if she survives with burns, that she set herself on fire just to trap the neighbors? What the hell?

Years ago I read the "Death of Vishnu", which also takes place in Mumbai. After reading Katherine Boo's book, living on the steps of an apartment building doesn't sound too bad.
I didn't know the work was non-fiction -- that surprised me, I just thought it was a novel. In fact, I would question the work as such. I read "Fever" by Mary Beth Keane and it is a work of historical fiction -- well-researched fiction but still fiction.

I don't know that Boo claims "non-fiction" but she quotes real people, follows the storylines of their lives and does her best to tell a truthful story

The discussion on this page is just amazing. Nerdfighters are thoughtful people, I love it.
Has anyone made videos about the book? I don't want to turn this discussion into "watch my videos wooo advertising myself" but I'm interested if others have made videos on this subject! I'm a songwriter so I put my thoughts into song form here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=konZf...

If anyone else has made videos I'd love to see them! DFTBA!

I don't know if this has been said before in the thread, but i feel like this book is truly a rose rising out of the shit. An amazing portrayal of the slums of Mumbai that left me speechless.

Suzan wrote: "Years ago I read the "Death of Vishnu", which also takes place in Mumbai. After reading Katherine Boo's book, living on the steps of an apartment building doesn't sound too bad.
I didn't know the w..." It really makes you step back and realize that your life could be much worst.

This will probably not be my last intervention about the book, but here are my first impressions after finishing it:
I liked the complexity of the story but also that of the language and tone. I could feel that the author is invested but does not want to infuse to much subjectivity to the story. I loved the deep way in which it is shown that so much is circumstantial (the trial scenes represent the epitome of randomness). I sensed the authenticity of the characters and liked how the juxtaposition of their fates was literary brought forward to show that we influence each other lives even if we do not know about each other.