Deborah Maris Lader, director of Chicago Printmakers Collaborative experiences the unfamiliar with:
Behind the Beautiful Forevers I’m shipping off to northern India soon, so I’ve been immersed in educating myself about the region. Katherine Boo’s book, about the people who live in the slums abutting the Mumbai airport, is so well written and thoughtful about its characters that it reads like fiction, when in fact it’s a work of narrative nonfiction. Her simultaneously heartbreaking and entertaining stories of Mumbai’s scavengers, prostitutes, politicians, families, thieves, mothers, and merchants put a human face on the brutal reality of life there, while capturing their hopeful optimism for a better future. I’ve got stacks of books on India, and by far this is my favorite. It will be difficult to reconcile the fact that I will meet those with similar stories in the streets only to go back to a hotel with running water and privacy. Yikes.
