Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo is certainly a horse of a different color in relation to different books of the ethnographic and research variety. Boo writes her story as one would write a fictitious novel, making it all the more interesting and enriching. Even now, though I feel slightly embarrassed by this fact, I find myself referring to persons real and actual as characters before giving myself a mental slap on the hand for doing so. In regards to style, I hope to carry some of this over in my essay- but some of what? Simply, I would to carry over some of the interest Boo can spark, as well as her creativity in language. My favorite passage that exemplifies this is when Boo talks about the prosecution of Robert the Zebra Man on pages 235-237. As per the importance of the content, I find it is great in spreading awareness. Awareness of what? Many things. The potential lives and struggles of those less fortunate than ourselves. What, sometimes, freedoms we enjoy every single day can cost-- and can cost, sometimes, people we know nothing of. It makes you greatly consider what can truly be going on in the world. In this case, we were simply shown it by learning the lives of the Annawadians.
Criticisms I have on Behind the Beautiful Forevers would be as follows. On a note of possible improvement, that there should be some way and time in which Boo reminds us that these are real people and situations. Though the way she wrote made everything very fresh and readable, as I mentioned before- I often forgot that the people we spoke of were real and actual! Even the very beginning of the book is written in this fashion. It was not so much dehumanizing of the situation, but it seemed to be put it in a whole different world. The police came in the night for Abdul and his family, and he would hide among the garbage in the moonlight. A daring escape by one of our protagonists! -But wait, we forget, he is not simply a 'protagonist', he was, in fact a real person. From the beginning, I struggled to remind myself of this with Boo's alluring novelistic style.
On note of things that are executed quite excellently is the same thing I have heralded all through this post, as well as criticized briefly, which is Boo's use of creative language and style. She is able to paint scenes in your head and make you care about the people of Annawadi. She can project feelings to you in a way that is genuine. For example, I cite again the pages 235-237. Boo references the irony that makes the children of Annwadi laugh, in that justice had finally come into an almost lawless place in the name of horses that were still treated better than anyone else; and I find that I too laughed and felt this twinge of irony in my chest as opposed to just recognizing it. I will applaud any author that can bring such emotion forth in me in something that is of a seemingly more academic subject. Hats off to the missus Katherine Boo!
All in all, it is a read I quite enjoyed and hope to draw inspiration from in my own ethnographic work.
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