A great deal of what is presumed to be intractable or inevitable in this world doesn't strike me that way at all.

Katherine Boo

Categorized in : World Way Strikes

.. becoming attached to a country involves pressing, uncomfortable questions about justice and opportunity for its least powerful citizens.

powerful opportunity country

People naturally long for a bit of the wealth that is whorling all around them, and if the work and education available to them won't get them closer to the comforts that they see others enjoying, the temptation to take shortcuts can be fierce.

temptation long people

I was spending a lot of time in Mumbai after I met my husband, who is Indian, and while parts of the city were prospering like crazy, I couldn't quite make out how the new wealth had changed the prospects of the majority of city residents who lived in slums. So after a few years I stopped wondering and started reporting.

crazy husband years

When I'm engaged in a story my health is not a big deal, but when I'm not doing anything, if you sit me down, I can get tied up in my own medical dramas. So I much prefer to work.

medical stories drama

Everyone in Annawadi talks like this: 'Oh, I will make my child a doctor, a lawyer, and he will make us rich'. It's vanity, nothing more. Your little boat goes west and you congratulate yourself, 'what a navigator I am!' And then the wind blows you east.

vanity blow children

We talk a lot about infrastructure in cities, and it's talking about highways and it's talking about trains, but I think more important to people who are low income is, how do I get from here to there? How do I become part of the affluence that's surrounding me?

think me important people

People talk about places like Mumbai as a tale of two cities, as if the rich and poor don't have anything to do with each other.

mumbai rich poor people

For myself, suffering doesnt make me a good person; it makes me selfish. Why do we think that people who have less should find it edifying?

good myself me people

I'm not squeamish. by Katherine Boo

I'm not squeamish.

I have been dealing with illness and its manifestations since I was a teenager, and I think that gives me a very healthy respect for the things in life we can't control.

think me respect life

When your work is nonfiction about low-income communities, pretty much anything that's not nonfiction about low-income communities feels like a guilty pleasure.

your like pleasure work