DISCUSSION QUESTIONS Behind the Beautiful Forevers
1. Barbara Ehrenreich calls Behind the Beautiful Forevers “one
of the most powerful indictments of economic inequality I’ve ever read.”
Yet the book shows the world of the Indian rich—lavish Bollywood
parties, an increasingly glamorous new airport—almost exclusively
through the eyes of the Annawadians. Are they resentful? Are they
envious? How does the wealth that surrounds the slumdwellers shape their
own expectations and hopes?
2. As Abdul works day and night with garbage, keeping his head down,
trying to support his large family, some other citydwellers think of him
as garbage, too. How does Abdul react to how other people view him? How
would you react? How do Abdul and his sort-of friend, Sunil, try to
protect themselves and sustain self-esteem in the face of other people’s
contempt?
3. The lives of ordinary women—their working lives, domestic lives, and
inner lives—are an important part of Behind the Beautiful Forevers.
The author has noted elsewhere that she’d felt a shortage of such
accounts in nonfiction about urban India. Do women like Zehrunisa and
Asha have more freedom in an urban slum than they would have had in the
villages where they were born? What is Meena, a Dalit, spared by living
in the city? What freedoms do Meena, Asha, and Zehrunisa still lack, in
your view?
4. Asha grew up in rural poverty, and the teenaged marriage arranged by
her family was to a man who drank more than he worked. In Annawadi, she
takes a series of calculated risks to give her daughter Manju a life far
more hopeful than that of other young women such as Meena. What does
Asha lose by her efforts to improve her daughter’s life chances? What
does she gain? Were Asha’s choices understandable to you, in the end?
5. The author has said elsewhere that while the book brings to light
serious injustices, she believes there is also hope on almost every
single page: in the imaginations, intelligence and courage of the people
she writes about. What are the qualities of a child like Sunil that
might flourish in a society that did a better job of recognizing his
capacities?
6. When we think of corruption, the examples tend to be drawn from big
business or top levels of government. The kind of corruption Behind the
Beautiful Forevers show us is often described as “petty”. Do you agree
with that characterization of the corruption Annawadians encounter in
their daily lives? Why might such corrruption be on the increase as
India grows wealthier as a nation?
7. Does Asha have a point when she argues that something isn’t wrong if
the powerful people say that it’s right? How does constant exposure to
corruption change a person’s internal understanding of right and wrong?
8. Shortly before Abdul is sent to juvenile jail, a major newspaper runs
a story about the facility headlined: “Dongri Home is a Living Hell.”
Abdul’s experience of Dongri is more complex, though. How does being
wrenched away from his work responsibilities at Annawadi change his
understandings of the hardships of other people? Are terms like liberty
and freedom understood differently by people who live in different
conditions?
9. Fatima’s neighbors view her whorling rages, like her bright
lipsticks, as free comic entertainments. How has her personality been
shaped by the fact that she has been defined since birth by her
disability—very literally named by it? Zehrunusa waivers between
sympathy for and disapproval of her difficult neighbor. In the end, did
you?
10. Zehrunisa remembers a time when every slumdweller was roughly equal
in his or her misery, and competition between neighbors didn’t get so
out of hand. Abdul doesn’t know whether or not to believe her account of
a gentler past. Do you believe it? Might increased hopes for a better
life have a dark as well as a bright side?
11. Many Annawadians—Hindu, Muslim, and Christian—spend less time in
religious observance than they did when they were younger, and a pink
temple on the edge of the sewage lake goes largely unused. In a time of
relative hope and constant improvisation for the slumdwellers, why might
religious practice be diminishing? What role does religious faith still
play in the slumdwellers’ lives?
12. Who do you think had the best life in the book, and why?
13. In the Author’s Note Katherine Boo emphasizes the volatility of an
age in which capital moves quickly around the planet, government
supports decline, and temporary work proliferates. Had the author
followed the families of Annawadi for only a few weeks or months, would
you have come away with a different understanding of the effects of that
volatility? Does uncertainty about their homes and incomes change how
Annawadians view their neighbors? Does economic uncertainty affect
relationships where you live?
14. At one point in the book, Abdul takes to heart the moral of a Hindu
myth related by The Master: Allow your flesh to be eaten by the eagles
of the world. Suffer nobly, and you’ll be rewarded in the end. What is
the connection between suffering and redemption in this book? What
connections between suffering and redemption do you see in your own
life? Are the sufferers ennobled? Are the good rewarded in the end?