《Behind the Beautiful Forevers》是一本由Katherine Boo著作，Random House出版的Hardcover图书，本书定价：USD 27.00，页数：256，特精心从网络上整理的一些读者的读后感，希望对大家能有帮助。

　　《Behind the Beautiful Forevers》读后感(一)：贫困与反抗

　　作者反反复复询问这样一个问题，为何穷人不反抗，为何不公平的社会不会坍塌？ why the poor don't rise up, and why unequal societies don't simply implode

　　作者的答案：贫民窟的居民具有deep, idiosyncratic intelligence这样的优秀品质，但是他们太穷了，每日为生活所迫，以至于无法团结起来反抗社会不公。

　　《Behind the Beautiful Forevers》读后感(二)：哪怕像狗一样卑贱的人，也有他自己的生活

　　在孟买的国际机场对面，有一堵墙，墙上写的是意大利瓷砖的广告词：beautiful forever，beautiful forever。。。而在这座墙和光鲜的广告背后，是巨大的平民窟。这里混杂着来自印度各地，不同种族宗教信仰的人们。几乎所有的人没有固定的工作，仅仅靠拾机场周边的垃圾为生。过着悲惨又无奈的生活。

　　作为世界上最大民主国家的印度，社会发展不平衡。存在的很严重的问题。这本书可看作印度社会最底层的一个缩影。而书中不同人物的遭遇，是现实的样本。

　　尽管作为印度最大城市和经济中心的孟买的经济高速发展，但并没有给贫民窟的居民带来任何实质的好处。贫穷，疾病，缺乏饮用水，糟糕的卫生条件和居住条件。。。更糟糕的是来自政府官员和警察的欺压凌辱。腐败夺走了政府和慈善机构的救济。没有人在乎他们的存在。

　　在这里，人们是多么的脆弱。也许是和邻居争吵这样的小事都会毁了一个家庭的生计。也正因为生活本已很糟糕了，一点点小事情都会让人轻易的放弃不值得可惜的生命。因为生存空间的狭小和资源的有限，在这里，人与人之间的关系，利益是首要的，而不是道义。向上爬的过程中难免会踩到其他人。

　　可是卑微的他们也有自己生活和希望。也许只是渴望有份体面的工作，或者得到一点点尊重和认可。他们中的有些人甚至有时候觉得自己与众不同。但这些希望在冷酷的现实面前是那么的无助,不管你多么的努力。不希望住在铁皮棚里的结果，往往是最终睡到了大街上。

　　读这本书的过程中反复问自己，为什么他们能够忍受如此悲惨的生活？同时也佩服他们活下来和继续生活的勇气。希望微乎其微但并不是没有。结尾处，拆迁的工作已经逐步的进行，等待他们的，又将会是怎么样的命运呢？

　　《Behind the Beautiful Forevers》读后感(三)：美好永远只是口号

　　Katherine Boo是普利策奖得主。我买这本书一是因为它纽约时报2012年推荐的年度最佳之一，二是因为题材。我对写得好的非虚构一直有兴趣，而且自从2007年的短暂印度行以来，我对印度一直保持一种有距离的好奇心。不过读这本书的过程很拖拉，总算把它结束了！

　　oo的文笔很漂亮，和何伟一样，赋予非虚构作品很强的文学性。她写这本书很辛苦，从2007年到2011年都在孟买机场旁边一个叫Annawadi的贫民窟里做深入调查，其间还经历了08年的那次著名恐怖袭击——说起来，那也是我离恐怖活动最近的一次。恐怖袭击的第二天，本来我该飞去孟买做展会的，而且展会就在被袭击的泰姬酒店里。恐怖袭击发生的时候，我同事已经在戴高乐机场准备要登机，临时被喊回去。

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　　If Boo’s aim is to shatter the smugness of those who still believe that India is “shining,” she succeeds (as she should). But in a country where corruption, poverty and inequality are the subjects of heated and continuous debate, what are the politics of this powerfully written and slickly produced book？ Where does it fit, in the larger conversation？ Surely, the question is a fair one of a book that makes such a strong claim to rigorously documenting the lives of the poor？

　　An evening with a family friend served up a clue. In the midst of complaining about the government’s flagging commitment to reforms and our waiter’s lazy ways, this friend, an ex IMF official based in Washington, delivered a rave review of Boo’s book. I was taken aback, as much as I would be if Mamata Didi suddenly declared a love of Prada shoes. I pushed him on why he had liked it. His answer, quite simply, was that it was beautifully written (which it is), and that he had learned a lot about Annawadi from the book. It was tempting to take these words at face value. It was perhaps wrong of me to expect purism. In the face of brilliant writing, surely even a doctrinaire IMFer could make peace with what the book makes obvious: that “trickle down” has not worked. Yet the incident opened a window to what I has sensed as troubling about the book, and my nagging discomfort with the near-unanimous praise it has elicited, especially for its its courage.

　　The truth is that it is no longer terribly risky to challenge the idea of a “shining” India. When my late father, Arjun Sengupta, released a report suggesting that 77 percent of Indians live on less than Rs. 20 a day, he was duly punished, albeit relatively mild Government of India style. The commission he chaired was not extended for a second term, his phone calls were not returned, and he spent the last months of his life distressed that his work was being ignored, even by the press. But the country’s mood has changed considerably since then. After more than three years of sagging growth, massive corruption, shrinking investment, and shockingly poor records on health and education, only a handful of ideologues will insist that India is still doing brilliantly (and my father’s report – once dismissed by Mr. Chidambaram as a “myth” – is back in circulation, even within the government). For the garden variety neoliberal, the argument has shifted quite noticeably, from celebrating India’s “shining,” to cataloguing the causes of its all-too-palpable dulling. The lead story in a recent issue of The Economist, titled “How India is Losing its Magic,” is but one indicator.

　　In fact, the major disagreements today are not over whether something has gone wrong, but about why it has gone wrong. Of course, neoliberals have a ready diagnosis: “governance failures” are destroying the effects of sound economic policy and youthful, entrepreneurial drive. (The Economist makes this point with characteristic self-assurance. India is “losing its magic” because of “the country’s desperate politics,” and “the state, still huge and crazy after all these years.”) Examples abound of floundering government-funded social programs and botched anti-poverty schemes. Even corruption, now undeniable in its mammoth presence and disastrous effects, is seen as a vestige of the old state, a stubborn ancien regime that has refused to keep pace with the liberalizing economy. The attendant preｓｃｒｉｐｔions are to be easily deduced: scale back the state as much as possible, dismantle its unworkable social programs, and slap on an Ombudsman to keep wayward civil servants in line.

　　To be fair, Boo offers no “solutions.” A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist knows better than to swat the reader with an overt “message.” Yet with its exclusive preoccupation with government failure – Boo does not sift through the public records of international organizations or large corporations, after all – the book’s subtle alignment with the neoliberal narrative is unmistakable. For a globally feted work that does in fact offer a sensitive portrayal of the aspirations, disappointments, and “deep, idiosyncratic intelligences of the poor,” this is most worrying. Some of the most pressing struggles today, for the poor, and more importantly, by the poor, are to increase public funding for health and education, to universalize the reach of social security measures, and to expand the ambit of the legal system in order to secure recognition and entitlements from the state.

　　One can understand why Boo is eluded by this. Given her preoccupation with documenting “poor on poor crime” – the reasons why, in these competitive times, the poor work against each other and have little capacity for collective action – she overlooks the many empowering instances where they do successfully organize, and even win. One may argue, of course, that a single book (or film or documentary) can never do everything, and that the scale of responsibility of an individual author should always be viewed as limited. Yet I find it astonishing that in the 250-odd pages of this otherwise insightful book, there are no examples of sustainable and constructive political relationships, among the residents of Annawadi, or between the residents of Annawadi and the outside world. How odd, for this is Mumbai, a city famous for its vigorous housing rights movements, sex workers’ unions, and small vendors’ associations. For a “single, unexceptional slum,” Annawadi seems exceptional indeed.

　　This brings me to my final concern about the book. Boo’s work is part of a larger genre, of films and writings on the urban poor, that has exploded in popularity in the last decade. While the reasons for the proliferation of such works are many, the chief one, surely, is their relative ease of production. It is not difficult or expensive to obtain access to the poor. There are no razor-wired fences and gun-toting guards to contend with, and one need not bother with bribing maids or hacking laptops. In contrast, how much do we know about the bed-hopping, drug-snorting, verbally abusive ways of the rich？ And what do we know – Shobha De’s Socialite Evenings comes to mind – is not the stuff of assiduous videotaping, interviewing, and rummaging through public records, but of semi-autobiographical observations that can rarely lay much claim to authenticity. Aren’t the lives of the poor already an open story？ When does a work that scrutinizes the lives of the poor so unsparingly become exploitative？ And doesn’t the ease of access to the marginalized enlarge the author’s scale of responsibility, to leave absolutely no stone unturned？

　　Again, to be fair to Boo, her book is a cut above the standard fare on the subject. If turned into a film, it will most likely be superior to the heavy-handed Slumdog Millionaire, or even the more nuanced Salaam Bombay. There is a good deal to be learned from the book. “Ribby children with flies in their eyes” may never be seen in the same light again, and one may be pushed to care more about a waiter’s meager wages than whether he dished up our soup on time. These are certainly possibilities. But there is another one, not so laudable: that the neoliberal establishment will find substance, in Boo’s book, for their wider narrative of why the government can only ever fail, and why retracting the already-thin cover of publicly funded programs remains the best bet for getting India back on track.