On the extent to which Katherine Boo can truly represent the culture and society of the people of Annawadi Bronson Hill College

In Behind the Beautiful Forevers Katherine Boo creatively controls the non-fictional narrative of the society and culture of the Annawadians. Combining fiction with fact, her representation of the Annawadian people comes to life expressing individuals, their emotions and their hardships which successfully evokes a plethora of affective responses in her audience. The grand sweeping delivery of Boo’s narrative entices readers into the foreign poverty-stricken world of the Mumbai Slums; however, Boo’s representation of the culture and society of Annawadi is potentially fantasized. Whilst Boo’s extensive creativity provides a means of necessary engagement expanding its reach among the western world, does it extend beyond reason to a point of alienation between cultures? Or, has Boo successfully mediated the border between fiction and reality, history and literature, providing an engaging, accurate and functioning representation of the people of Annawadi? Although Boo’s critics Nussbaum and Vaidya claim an incomplete representation of the Annawadian people in Behind the Beautiful Forevers due to its sheer absence of factual context, within her humane limitations, Boo has represented the Annawadians to quite an accurate and...