March 31, 2014
7:00 - 8:00pm
Join the Harvard Global Health Institute and the South Asia Institute for a discussion of Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo.
Annawadi is a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport, and as India starts to prosper, Annawadians are electric with hope. Abdul, a reflective and enterprising Muslim teenager, sees “a fortune beyond counting” in the recyclable garbage that richer people throw away. Asha, a woman of formidable wit and deep scars from a childhood in rural poverty, has identified an alternate route to the middle class: political corruption. With a little luck, her sensitive, beautiful daughter—Annawadi’s “most-everything girl”—will soon become its first female college graduate. And even the poorest Annawadians, like Kalu, a fifteen-year-old scrap-metal thief, believe themselves inching closer to the good lives and good times they call “the full enjoy.”
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Join the Asia Center for a discussion of Yan Lianke's Dream of Ding Village, featuring discussant Professor Karen Thornber, Comparative Literatures and East Asian Languages and Civilizations.