Behind the Beautiful Forevers Reading Guide & Discussion Questions

Book Club Discussion Questions

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For supplemental discussion material see our Beyond the Book article, Slums and our BookBrowse Review of Behind the Beautiful Forevers.

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

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?

Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of Random House. Any page references refer to a USA edition of the book, usually the trade paperback version, and may vary in other editions.