the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Oct 28, 2024
Book: Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity, by Katherine Boo, 2014.
This award-winning book focuses on a community of poor who live in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport. They live in ramshackle huts, and survive however then can: sorting through garbage for 14 hours a day, selling sex, functioning as a middleman, thieving. Nothing is easy. Any success makes one a target of their neighbors or the predatory police or bureaucrats. Corruption is everywhere.
The book engrosses you in the lives of the residents. You see with dramatic intensity the details of each member of a family, their dreams, their successes, or their hopes brutally dashed. By focusing on the various people of this community, you have an unforgettable window into all of Mumbai.
Book: Whose Names Are Unknown: A Novel, by Sanora Babb, 2014.
This long-buried novel explores with brutal detail the life of a farming family, the Dunnes, in the 1930s Oklahoma dust bowl and their forced migration to the fertile but bitterly disappointing orchards and vineyards of California.
The book shows life in the mostly company owned migrant camps and the backbreaking work and starvation wages they had to endure. Even though they face one hardship after another, they never give up hope or their humanity. The book also tells of Communists organizing in the cotton fields, strikes for better wages and working conditions, and the hope of a better tomorrow.