Tag Archives: Death
Beatrice’s Dream by Karen Lynn Williams, photographs by Wendy Stone
At 13, Beatrice is sure of her dreams: ” … to pass my exams, go on to secondary school and study nursing. Then I will help people who are sick or on their own, like me.” In Beatrice’s world on the other side of the world in Kenya, what seem like achievable goals come with a whole different set of prodigious challenges.
Beatrice lost her father to a car accident and her mother to tuberculosis when she was just 9. “Since then I have always worried about being alone and wondered who will take care of me.” For now, she lives with the oldest of her brothers and his wife, behind his tiny shop. Enhanced with international photographer Wendy Stone’s outstanding, colorful photographs, Karen Lynn Williams uses Beatrice’s voice to guide young readers through Beatrice’s day – her half-hour walk to school through the mud and garbage that litter her path, the people who “move around everywhere like ants,” her day in the school building constructed of tin, her favorite subjects of English and Kiswahili (Kenya’s official language) in her Class Seven “small room crammed so full of desks that we can hardly squeeze past them to get to our seats.” Once school is finished, she returns home “before it gets dark” to help prepare the family’s meal, iron her clothes, and “if we have enough paraffin in our small lamp, I read.”
The place Beatrice calls home is Kibera, one of Africa’s largest slums, located in Kenya’s capital of Nairobi. It’s just 618 acres, and yet over half a million people live there, explains the book’s creators in the final pages. “There are no roads and few of the residents have modern toilets, clean drinking water or electricity. The crime rate is high and disease spreads rapidly.” Against such tremendous odds, just staying in school is an enormous accomplishment, and yet ” … most children see education as the best way to escape from the slum.”
Beatrice’s story continues in the book’s final pages – but no spoilers here! [Her story has definite echoes to Voice of a Dream by Ugandan author Glaydah Namukasa.] What so many children in other parts of the world take for granted proves to be an immense, difficult-to-achieve privilege in Kibera. Don’t wait until your youngsters whinge about having to go to school to share Beatrice’s inspiring narrative … read with them now: forewarned is forearmed!
Tidbit: Kibera was made temporarily famous in the West when parts of John le Carré’s novel, The Constant Gardener starring Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz, were filmed there. The cameras left, but the crew set up the Constant Gardener Trust in 2004 to thank and help the community, although no updates seem to be available since 2010.
Readers: Children
Published: 2011 Continue reading
Filed under ..Children/Picture Books, .Biography, .Nonfiction, African
Cross Game 5 (vols. 10-11) and Cross Game 6 (vols. 12-13) by Mitsuru Adachi, translated by Lillian Olsen
Let’s play ball … While everyone else is lost to Linsanity, I’m still back in high school with ace pitcher Ko Kitamura! Volume 10 is all about the game: at the top of the fourth, Seishu Gakuen – thanks to Ko and star batter Azuma – is actually leading by a single point in the regional play-off against Ryuou, the team that’s favored (again) to win the National High School Baseball Tournament at Koshien. Aoba – who can’t play just because she’s a girl! – watches from the sidelines; they still can’t get along outside the game, but they’re in perfect synch when it comes to pitching that ball. Just at the final moment of truth, Wakaba makes her wishes known from the other side!
The games are over for now in volume 11, but life gets even more interesting when a new soba shop opens next door to Kitamura’s Sports. Everyone does a double-take each time they spot the owners’ daughter Akane Takigawa who bears an uncanny resemblance to Wakaba. In an almost too-much moment, she’s carrying a shopping bag marked “Wakaba” – “It’s from the fruit store in front of Oizumi Park Station,” she explains – when Ko and Azuma meet her face to face. Ko, Aoba, Papa Tsukishima, and especially Akaishi (who adored her like no other) don’t quite know what to do with their … well … shock!
The final year of high school starts for Ko and Azuma in volume 12: this will be their last chance to get to – and win! – Koshien. Wakaba predicted victory for this year, after all! Her presence is more than felt with Akane around: she not only looks like Wakaba, but her personality is similarly caring, nurturing, loving towards all. The school year moves quickly. Ko and Akane grow comfortably closer. Aoba breaks her leg and finds Azuma constantly by her side. Outside the hospital, Azuma has a run-in with evil coach Daimo who’s apparently back in the game …
In volume 13, the academic year is already over, but the last summer baseball season is just starting. Aoba’s on crutches, but that’s not stopping her from bossing the team to work harder, including Ko who’s still stealing all her best pitching moves: “Don’t be so stingy,” he throws back. “Think of it as borrowing my body and pitching vicariously through me.” In between training, everyone seems to be pairing off … even the youngest Momiji! Ko turns 18 at volume’s end … and his devotion to Wakaba who shares his natal day is one of the most touching manga moments ever. Sniff, sniff. Pass the tissues, already!
Readers: Middle Grade, Young Adult
Published: 2011 and 2012 (United States)
CROSS GAME © Mitsuru Adachi
Original Japanese edition published by Shogakukan Inc. Continue reading
20th Century Boys (vol. 19) by Naoki Urasawa, with the cooperation of Takashi Nagasaki, English adaptation by Akemi Wegmüller
Kanna, Otcho, and Manjome are all in the same room – you could say even on the same side. The final words from Manjome leave everyone speechless: “Please … kill him.”
Fast track north to the guitar-slinging stranger who calls himself Yabuki Joe who’s sharing fresh grilled fish riverside with police officer Chono. The pair end up in a bustling border town where the Kanto Army fortress looms and the great wall separates Tokyo from the rest of the world. The only way to get through the checkpoint is with a transit pass … but attempting to cross with a fake will get you killed.
Yabuki Joe and Chono get noticed by the border’s resident tough-guy cowboy named Ichi the Spade who introduces the twosome to a talented manga artist. Not only is he the forger who created the one transit pass that passed, but this manga-maker also turns out to be an old neighbor of Kanna’s.
While Yabuki Joe convinces him to start cranking out those passes (and promising him that manga can change the world), Ichi sells Chono back to the police. Not only does Yabuki Joe need to get those gates open for 200 anxious border refugees, but now he’s got some rescuing to do.
In the fortress awaits a decades-old trap of “pure evil” for our guitar hero. “It’s hard being evil. It’s a lot easier being the good guy,” our defender of justice intones.
Winner of the Eisner Award (the Oscar of comics) for Best U.S. Edition of International Material – Asia in 2011, 20th Century Boys remains an addictive favorite even after 19 volumes. A mere three more are forthcoming, and already I’m missing the rowdy gang. Surely I’ll be humming my made-up version of ”guta-rara … suda-rara” for many sleepless nights to come!
To catch up with all the previous volumes of 20th Century Boys – click here.
Readers: Young Adult, Adult
Published: 2012 (United States)
20 SEIKI SHONEN © Naoki Urasawa/Studio Nuts
Original Japanese edition published by Shogakukan Inc. Continue reading
The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey by Walter Mosley
At 91, Ptolemy Grey is “waiting to finally be a man.” as he writes in his last letter, addressed to his young charge and heir Robyn. The novel begins backwards with an “Afterward” that summarizes the whole of Ptolemy’s nine-decades-plus, but to understand why he’s sitting there “with a pistol under the cushion and a gold doubloon on the kitchen table,” you’ll have to unravel the almost-300 pages (or eight hours if you’re listening) that follow.
Ptolemy has dementia. He lives alone in an apartment in Los Angeles so cluttered (filthy and bug-infested, too) that he can’t use his own bedroom, and even worse his own bathroom. His only regular human contact has been with his grandnephew Reggie who used to come take care of him. Now Reggie’s dead, gunned down on a friend’s front steps.
At Reggie’s funeral, Ptolemy meets 17-year-old Robyn, an orphan living with his niece, who shows up at his front door and offers her company and help. Suspicious at first, Ptolemy allows Robyn to clear the detritus from his apartment (not to mention his heart and soul). They quickly become inseparable, their unlikely relationship settling somewhere between parent and child, and impossible lovers.
When Ptolemy is offered a chance to take an experimental drug that will give him temporary clarity, he grabs the opportunity to finally make sense – and peace – with the ghosts of his frightened past: his mentor Coydog who was brutally murdered, his beloved wife Sensia who continually broke his heart, the neighborhood addict Melinda who demands his money, and finally, to find out what happened to his grandnephew Reggie. Ptolemy’s memories can’t be separated from almost a century of destructive, racially-charged history brought so sharply into focus so you can’t look away. Ptolemy’s reprieve is brief, but ignorance is no longer an option for the reader …
Confession: This is the first book by the prolific Walter Mosley that I’ve ever finished; I didn’t actually read it myself – narrator Dominic Hoffman conjured the story in his smooth, inviting voice. I admit to the possibility I might not have reached the end this time, either – Ptolemy’s sudden backroom access to the experimental drugs is not particularly convincing, Ptolemy’s hazy insistence he’s made a deal with the Devil seems tiresomely derivative, Reggie’s murderer is so obvious you really wonder why Ptolemy needs fatal hallucinogens to figure that out, and the just-on-the-edge-of-skeezy reminders of the relationship between Ptolemy and a teenager young enough to be his great-great(!!)-granddaughter gets to be a bit much.
But, finish I had to because Ptolemy Grey turned out to be part of a tremendously insightful look into Alzheimer’s. And getting on in years, I needed the education. [Thanks again to my poet friend, who is famous for her writings on her own mother’s battle with the debilitating illness, most notably her Dementia Blog.]
If you choose to partake (and well you should if the topic is of interest – or a necessity? – to you), here’s the recommended path: Start with Alice LaPlante’s unforgettable Turn of Mind, then get yourself to a screening of the spectacular film A Separation, then check out the NPR report about a skin cancer drug that is working wonders on mice with Alzheimer’s. Then, and only then, pick up The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey … sometimes, timing really is everything.
Readers: Adult
Published: 2010 Continue reading
Filed under ..Adult Readers, .Audio, .Fiction, African American
Voice of a Dream by Glaydah Namukasa
Nanfuka wants nothing more than to finish her education and become a nurse – the first in her village. While still a child herself, the teenager is suddenly forced to leave school and thrust into adult responsibilities when she is called home as her father dies from AIDS. With her mother missing, Nanfuka is now in charge of her four younger siblings, including a baby sister with AIDS who is clearly wasting away.
Her paternal Aunt Naka is only too ready to marry Nanfuka off to the highest bidder, send the other children away, and sell the family’s land. Her neighbors, too, seem to want to see Nanfuka fail, taunting her with her own dreams of accomplishment. Thankfully, Nanfuka has other allies, including Nurse Kina from school who offers encouraging solutions, and even the school lothario Sendi who changes his cowboy swagger and proves himself worthy of Nanfuka’s friendship.
With resilience, Nanfuka manages to maintain her independence while keeping her family together. The deus ex machina ending gives the story an almost fairytale unreality, although Nanfuka will surely continue to face future challenges in achieving her determined dream.
Ugandan writer Glaydah Namukasa won the Senior Award in the Macmillan Writer’s Prize for Africa in 2006 for Dream. Just 25 when her slim novel was chosen, Namukasa’s youth is clearly evident in her plain and blunt writing, although it also exhibits a naïve freshness. Her literary journey is certainly one to watch.
Tidbit: When U.K.-based international publishing mega-giant Macmillan closed its African operations in 2011 after paying £11.2M in fines over fraud, the annual Writer’s Prize for Africa, as well as other programs supporting African education and literature in East and West Africa, disappeared. With diminishing access and opportunities for African writers to connect with international audiences, organizations such as FEMRITE, the Uganda Women Writers’ Association to which writers like Namukasa belong, and honors such as The Caine Prize for African Writing, will hopefully continue to grow in prominence and reach.
Readers: Young Adult, Adult
Published: 2006 Continue reading
Filed under ..Adult Readers, ..Young Adult Readers, .Fiction, African
The Gemma Doyle Trilogy: A Great and Terrible Beauty, Rebel Angels, and The Sweet Far Thing by Libba Bray
Here’s a dilemma: If you knew how much a book series might deteriorate by its final title, would you read all the way through to the bitter end? As contrary as I am, I probably would … but I have to admit that in the case of this Gemma Doyle three-parter by mega-bestselling author Libba Bray, had I known that the first installment’s title ironically proves to be a fitting warning – A Great and Terrible Beauty, as in the series goes from great to downright terrible – I would definitely have moved on to better pages. And yet, almost 2000 pages (or 46 hours if you’ve gone audible), here I am …
Let’s start with ‘great.’ On her 16th birthday, Gemma Doyle, the daughter of an English family based in India, has a fight with her mother. She runs off into a Bombay market, then has a violent vision of her mother’s death – by her own hand – which proves to be true. The family abandons India, and Gemma is shipped off to Spence Academy outside London, where Gemma will learn “the necessary skills to become [one of] England’s future wives and mothers, hostesses and bearers of the Empire’s feminine traditions.” This is 1895 Victorian England, after all …
Initially an outcast, Gemma bonds soon enough with her mousy roommate Ann, alpha girl Felicity, and the ever-gorgeous Pippa. She discovers a quarter-century old diary of a former Spence girl which eventually lead the girls into other-world adventures in “the realms,” where they learn about the ancient Order and feel the looming threat of the evil – but missing – Circe. More often than not, Gemma finds herself fantasizing about handsome Kartik, who somehow shadowed her all the way from India, who’s part of a venerable all-male secret society charged with protecting the Order. Beauty turns out to be a big mystery, with lots of fantasy adventure, a bit of romance, enough literary allusions to make English teachers pat themselves on the back, and, of course, plenty of coming-of-age angst in a rather corseted society – think Victorian mean girls with a vengeance.
Then comes Rebel Angels, and the excitement of the new begins to tarnish. The girls’ otherworld adventures continue as they struggle with the responsibility of their new knowledge, although their biggest challenge seems to be curb their own shallow demands: Gemma wavers between strength and stupidity with an alarming regularity, Ann really needs to get a backbone, Felicity’s obsession with power fuels too many tantrums, and Pippa – who got stuck in the realms in Book 1 trying to escape a bad marriage – worries even more about her beauty now that she’s dead. Right. In between their catty fights, their family dysfunctions, and too many forays into self-indulgence, they do eventually manage to come face-to-face with Circe and finish her off. They hope.
Now brace yourself for ‘terrible’: Far Thing is over 800 pages of convoluted plotting – think insane asylum patients and debutantes, caped marauders, factory girls burnt to death, American Jews on and off the stage, talking trees, too many undead to count (including a certain Circe all washed up!), and so much more, whooo hoooo! The self-absorbed whining hits a fervent droning pitch; Ann’s self-pity, Felicity’s powerlust, Pippa’s histrionics are cringe-inducing enough, but Gemma’s sudden talent for making one moronic mistake after another renders her utterly unbelievable.
How such a memorable start can devolve to such simpering dribble is disappointment indeed. Most appalling throughout is realizing that these girls are either too stupid – or worse, that unfeeling– to bestow a moment of their selfish magic to save a little girl who is being incestuously abused by the monster guardian who did the same to his now teenage daughter.
Dwindling entertainment value aside, Bray wastes countless opportunities to explore issues of gender, sexuality, and rigid social class with any semblance of depth. She introduces such subjects as if showing off, but neglects responsible follow-through: quoting an abusive father’s dismissal of Oscar Wilde, for example, is a clever way to comment on the social mores of the time on homosexuality, but hardly enough when she finally reveals a tortured lesbian relationship.
Final word of advice: If you feel you must read the full series (sometimes we need to know what’s being peddled to our children), choose at least the audible version, expertly read by British ex-pat Josephine Bailey with just enough control and dignity to reign in her over-excitable Victorian charges … even as they turn into caricatures on the page, Bailey’s nuanced voice imbues them with a semblance of saving grace. Great and terrible indeed!
Readers: Young Adult
Published: 2003, 2006, 2007 Continue reading
Filed under ..Young Adult Readers, .Audio, .Fiction, British, Nonethnic-specific
Waiting: A Novel of Uganda at War by Goretti Kyomuhendo, afterword by M.J. Daymond
Still a young teenager, Alinda knows only too well the potential horrors of war … and yet her immediate family has, thus far, managed to miraculously remain intact and relatively safe. In 1979, the reign of Idi Amin – the internationally infamous Ugandan despot responsible for the extermination of some half a million people – is nearly ended, and yet citizens are not safe from the continuing violence brought by terrorizing soldiers and wandering “Liberators.”
Even in their remote village, the gunshots are never far enough; every night, Alinda’s extended family and neighbors gather to sleep away from their homes, on the edge of the banana plantation. Everything of value has been buried in pits, hopefully a safe distance from their houses. In spite of the looming danger, Kaaka, the grandmotherly family servant, claims herself too old to bother to seek nightly safety. Then Alinda’s mother, heavily pregnant and about to give birth, refuses to go to the sleeping place, as well.
Day after day, night after night, the villagers wait. Bullets, then a landmine, too soon shatter the village peace. When the “Liberators” – relatively peaceful, yet very hungry – arrive in droves, Alinda’s brother becomes fascinated with the peripatetic heroes, while her best friend and younger sister can’t seem to stay away from their makeshift tents. Meanwhile the adults worry about their depleted granaries … and the growing uncertainty of all their futures.
Goretti Kyomuhendo is a multi-award winning novelist in her native Uganda. Waiting, her first title to be published in the U.S. (from the lauded academic indie publisher Feminist Press), is not so much a story well-told as it is a sensitive meditation particularly focused on the effects of conflict and war on women. As the oldest daughter, Alinda must think first about her caregiver duties over her desire to return to school. The single mother Nyinabarongo and her young daughter are throwaway cast-offs from her husband and his family. The never-named “Lendu woman,” whose husband often travels, is shunned as a foreigner and labelled a witch for her healing herbs. The many wives of Alinda’s Uncle Kembo – depending on his interchangeable religious affiliation – seem to be little more than equally interchangeable bedmates for convenience and comfort.
Kyomuhendo is unblinking in her characterizations of Ugandan women in crisis … and yet what is steadfastly imprinted by book’s end is the women’s determination to survive and even flourish in circumstances dire, tragic, and often unimaginable.
Readers: Young Adult, Adult
Published: 2007 (United States) Continue reading
Filed under ..Adult Readers, ..Young Adult Readers, .Fiction, African
Forgotten Country by Catherine Chung
As Janie weeps over her first-ever separation from her mother, who is about to give birth, her grandmother admonishes her with the grave responsibility Janie must bear for her new sibling. “In our family … a sister always dies,” her grandmother warns, sharing the horrific tale of her own infant sister’s death during the Japanese occupation of Korea.
Two decades later, living Stateside, Janie’s family is in crisis: sister Hannah has severed family ties, while their father faces terminal cancer. Seeking the latest treatments, her parents return to Korea, charging Janie with bringing Hannah back. The sisters’ devastating confrontation sends Janie alone to rejoin her parents and extended family, each scarred by the terrifying legacy of colonial occupation, war, dangerous politics, and a fractured country.
Verdict: No argument that the prize-winning Chung writes elegiac, exquisite, multilayered prose, yet her debut ultimately falters between too much (self-absorption overload, cousin Gabe’s death, sleazy adviser) and not enough (Hannah’s disappearance, her uncle’s silence). For greater satisfaction, readers might try Sonya Chung‘s Long for This World or Chang-rae Lee‘s The Surrendered.
Review: “Fiction,” Library Journal, February 1, 2012
Readers: Adult
Published: 2012 Continue reading
Filed under ..Adult Readers, .Fiction, Korean American
Genkaku Picasso (vols. 2-3) by Usamaru Furuya, translated by John Werry
Doh! For some reason, I had no idea the other-worldly adventures of the Picasso/Chiaki dynamic duo [pocket-angel Chiaki directs the surviving Picasso towards doing good deeds for his fellow students] was a trilogy. I figured on a few more years of diving into secret sketches since high school lasts at least that long. Alas, we’re lucky to get even three installments because, according to creator Usamaru Furuya in his “Afterword” at series end, “This story was planned to end after eight issues [in serialized format], or two volumes, but I wouldn’t have been able to pull it all together that way, so I got to do three volumes.” He adds, “Each volume is thick, though, so it’s more like there are four! Each one’s a good value! Ha ha ha!”
Those valuable life-saving exploits in volume 2 include relieving the school’s star pitcher’s competitive angst disguised as girl problems, getting over debilitating mean-girl trauma leftover from an early age, revealing one’s true self regardless of outward appearances, and holding on to dreams even when the Simon Cowell-wannabes try to shatter your soul.
In volume 3, Picasso comes to the rescue of a former classmate who dropped out because his’ loving’ Tiger Mother whittled him down to almost nothing (parents take note, ahem), then saves a friend feeling betrayed by unrequited love from making a dangerous mistake.
Then (finally) in the second half of volume 3, it’s Picasso’s turn for some revealing sketches. Picasso’s closer friends finally begin to wonder how he knows so much about their lives. Questions, then accusations fly, sending Picasso off on a soul-search of his own … and Chiaki must guide him through one more challenging adventure. Jaded old reader that I am, I confess to getting completely blurry over the last 20 pages …
Tidbit: Hopefully this post comes just in time to be part of the Usamaru Furuya Manga Moveable Feast which ends today. I didn’t know such a fabulous effort existed until I posted Furuya’s No Longer Human (vols. 1-2) [markedly different from his Genkaku trilogy, by the way], which serendipitously got included in said Feast’s Archive. The Furuya Feast, hosted by fellow manga addict Ash Brown of Experiments in Manga, is just the latest in the Manga Moveable Feast [MMF] series founded by Kate Dacey of The Manga Critic in February 2010. To learn more about MMF, click here. Luddite that I am, I’m joining in a little late, but the adage ‘better late than never’ sure applies here! What an inspiring manga community I’ve stumbled into … addicts unite!
Readers: Young Adult, Adult
Published: 2011 (United States)
GENKAKU PICASSO © Usamaru Furuya
Original Japanese edition published by Shueisha Inc. Continue reading
Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo
Remember the title of Katherine Boo’s new book Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity, because you will see it on upcoming nominee lists for the next round of Very Important Literary Prizes. That Boo won the Pulitzer in 2000, a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship in 2002, became a staff writer for The New Yorker in 2003 (contributor since 2001) after 10 years with The Washington Post, and is just now publishing her debut title, will guarantee media coverage. That Beautiful is an unforgettable true story, meticulously researched with unblinking honesty, will make Boo’s next awards well-deserved.
From November 2007 to March 2011, Boo became a regular fixture in Annawadi, “the sumpy plug of slum” next to the constantly-modernizing international Mumbai airport, and home to 3,000 inhabitants “packed into, or on top of 355 huts.” Settled in 1991 by Tamil Nadu laborers from southern India hired to repair an airport runway, 21st-century Annawadi sits “where New India collided with old India and made new India late.” Encircling Annawadi are “five extravagant hotels,” luxurious evidence of India’s growing global presence: “’Everything around us is roses,’” describes an Annawadian, “’And we’re the sh*t in between.’” In this fetid microcosm, everyday dramas range from petty jealousies to explosive violence fueled by religion, caste, and gender.
At the center of Boo’s story is garbage trafficker Abdul, the oldest son and prime earner of the 11-member Husain family who comprise almost one-third of Annawadi’s three-dozen Muslim population. Thoughtful, quiet Abdul, who is 16 or 19 – “his parents were hopeless with dates” – his ill father, and his older sister stand accused of beating their crippled neighbor One Leg and setting her on fire. For three years, the family is victimized by a labyrinthine legal system controlled by open palms constantly demanding payment.
Life continues in Annawadi: Asha, a lowly-paid kindergarten teacher, works her growing political connections toward escaping the slum, determined her daughter Manju will become Annawadi’s first college graduate. Manju’s best friend Meena wants something more than to be a trapped, arranged teenage bride: “Everything on television announced a new and better India for women,” but “marrying into a village family was like time-traveling backward.”
The toilet cleaner Mr. Kamble is literally dying to raise enough money for a new heart valve so he can continue to shovel sewage and feed his family. The tiny scavenger-turned-thief Sunil (first introduced to Western readers in Boo’s February 2009 New Yorker article) worries that he will remain forever stunted, but at least he’s not a “baldie” like his taller, younger sister whose rat bites have become “boils [that] erupted with worms.” Meanwhile, thieving Kalu recreates the latest Bollywood films with his talented impersonations, entertaining slum kids who will never witness such marvels themselves.
Mumbai, for its marvelous rebirth, remains the largest city in an India that, in spite of being “an increasingly affluent and powerful nation … still housed one-third of the poverty, and one-quarter of the hunger, on the planet.” With the wealth of India’s top 100-richest equaling almost a quarter of the country’s GDP, today’s gap between top and bottom is virtually unfathomable.
Having built her lauded career on capturing the experiences of those living in some of America’s poorest communities, Boo moves “beyond [her] so-called expertise” to her husband’s country of origin, ready to “compensate for my limitations the same way I do in unfamiliar American territory: by time spent, attention paid, documentation secured, accounts cross-checked.” Once the Annawadians accepted the novelty of her foreign presence, “they went more or less about their business as I chronicled their lives” on the page, on film, on audiotape, in photos.
Throughout such careful documentation, the one element missing – very much to her credit – is Boo herself. Beautiful is by no means a personal memoir; it is not a socioeconomic study on poverty, nor a political treatise on widespread corruption. Beautiful is pure, astonishing reportage with as unbiased a lens as possible about specific individuals who populate a clearly demarcated section of ever-changing Mumbai.
The details of Boo’s process – with a glimpse into her experiences – are added in the “Author’s Note” at book’s end. Further details about Boo follow in “A Conversation with Katherine Boo” conducted by Random House power editor Kate Medina. Before ever “meeting” Kate Boo, readers thoroughly experience Annawadi with Abdul, One Leg, Manju, Sunil, and so many memorable others. Boo’s presence as the silent reporter remains so discreet throughout that she virtually disappears as you journey deeper and deeper, unable to turn away.
Review: Christian Science Monitor, January 26, 2012
Readers: Adult
Published: 2012 Continue reading
Filed under ..Adult Readers, .Nonfiction, Indian, Nonethnic-specific
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