As I was reading through the chapters
of Playing With Fire, it reminded me of another book that I read in high
school. This book is called Behind the Beautiful Forevers and it tells
of the story of individuals and families living in Anawadi, a slum in Mumbai.
This slum is situated on the grounds of Mumbai Airport. Surrounding them are
tall and glamorous high rise buildings, home to the wealthy residents of the
city.
I think it is important to note that the book was written and narrated by a woman named Katherine Boo who stayed in Anawadi for sometime, taking notes and closely following the lives of the families. She is an American journalist that investigates and documents poverty around the world.
When I thought of the book while reading Playing With Fire, I tried to make connections of how they were different and similar. They both narrate specific lives of poor communities in India. While Behidn the Beautiful Forevers focuses on familial lives and children, Playing With Fire centers on the lives and revelations of seven women. They both, however, display clearly the divide of the caste system in India. The biggest difference, to me, was the fact that one was written by an American and the latter written by a woman born in Lucknow, the largest city of Uttar Pradesh. I still haven't finished PlayingWith Fire, however I think that I can make some inferences about the two thus far.
Here is a video that briefly explains the dynamics in Behind the Beautiful Forevers.
I wondered, as I compared the two, whether or not authors influenced the validity of the words and stories told. I even questioned the validity of Katherine Boo's book in high school because her stories came from viewing these events play out and hearing from the people she wrote about. Her book is really a second hand account of these families and children, unlike the first hand accounts of Playing With Fire. Playing With Fire, as we know, was composed of the diary entires of seven women's experiences through childhood, adolescence, and motherhood. However, how do these two ways of writing fiction affect the overall piece?
I believe that it won't begin to encompass the entire story. With Playing With Fire, we are exposed to the exact and meticulously put together accounts of these women, while Behind the Beautiful Forevers forgoes this type of involvement. What happens to the voices of these people? Of course I don't think that Katherine Boo had any bad intention with her piece, although she unfortuantely doesn't get the same effect that Playing With Fire has with her audience. Behind the Beautiful Forevers was a bestseller, sold as a story time book rather than non-fiction. I think that it is unfortunate that Playing with Fire is not at the same level of publicity because they both have similar themes--luck, violence against women, and motherhood.
Background also comes into play. How much do they differ when the authors come from completely different backgrounds? I believe the main compromise that Katherine Boo had to make for her book was the fact that she did not grow up in India, nor speak Hindi. Playing with Fire is full of Hindi words and expressions that help the reader to fully engage with book.
However, both of their descriptions of the caste system on the people of India are quite accurate and truthful. These two similarities are what make me believe that Katherine Boo tried her best to represent the people of Anawadi and bring attention to the inequalities of the caste system that the rest of the world might not have known about.
I would be very interested to read Behind the Beautiful Forevers and compare and contrast it with Playing with Fire as you have said you have been doing. I think the first thing that struck me, and that you addressed, was that this other book was written by Katherine Boo, an outsider to the subject. Even if she is writing extremely factually, there is something missing in her recollection of the story, and there always would be. No matter how much research, no matter how much experience she had, there is a connection that she does not have. There is also the issue of agency, of who gets to tell a story. One particular quote in Playing with Fire's first chapter explains the negative affects of this white-washed storytelling, "If we ourselves cannot become a key part of any research or documentation process; if such a process does not aim to advance our own skills and analyses; and if a team of English-educated urban women draped in starched cotton saris uses our work and experiences to conduct a study in intellectual isolation from us, would that carry any significant meaning for us besides exploitation?" (55).
ReplyDeleteSomething else that is really interesting to consider in applying that quote and that critical lens that the women who wrote Playing with Fire share to Katherine Boo's book is thinking, who Does it serve when these stories are told by "English-educated urban women"? The TED talk we watched hosted by Chimamanda Adichie comes to mind. How does the telling of a story by an outside group alter the perception of a different culture, different people, of a different country as a whole? I think that Katherine Boo telling this story from this perspective feeds into the U.S. having the notion that people in India need to be saved or pitied. While Playing with Fire is also incredibly sad at times, it also explains issues in the way that the women want them to be heard, and it emphasizes their own agency, the activism that happens within India, and the fuller side of the story that gets lost in an American perspective.
I have not read Behind the Beautiful Forevers, so I can only provide my opinion based on researching the background of the author and reading reviews of the book in order to gain some idea of who tells the story and from what perspective she comes from. I think it's important to always keep comparing and being critical of anything you read, but I think in particularly in the context of a novel written about a place by a person who lived there very briefly in the grand scheme of things, and who has inherent bias towards the place.
Behind the Beautiful Forevers sounds like such an interesting book, as you talk about it relating to Playing With Fire. I do think one thing we can look at with the book by Katherine boo is when we talked about feminist methodology. It many circumstance, the sources we get our information from is important. In Playing With Fire, these women are documenting their real, life stories. This tactic helps people really understand what it’s like to be in these women’s shoes. They have first-hand knowledge in which, not saying Behind the Beautiful Forevers is filled with lies, but it makes Playing With Fire more believable. It also makes their person stories relatable to other women who may have similar experiences in their lives.
ReplyDeleteIt is sad to think about the people in India living through the caste system in both of these stories. It would be hard to go through experiences these women go through, but it is important to recognize what is going on in other countries as well. Although it is important to know where you get information from when talking about other countries, or anything in general, it is good that there are similarities in the books Playing With Fire and Behind the Beautiful Forevers.