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liralen's review against another edition
4.0
I can't imagine that these girls will make successful prostitutes. Their fate, though, has been sealed from birth. They are barely literate. They don't go to school. In fact, they don't go anywhere. They spend their lives in these two dark rooms in the corner of the courtyard, tripping down the spiral staircase, hovering around the entrance to the alleyway, and occasionally going in a rickshaw to buy food and clothes. That is the extent of their world. (18)
Brown went to Pakistan as a researcher, but she ended up learning a great deal more than she expected. The story she tells is not an academic one, but rather a personal one; it's a gradual unfolding of the lives of a family living and working in the local prostitution district. It's a world where the trade is passed down from mother to daughter, although this is perhaps not prostitution as Westerners think of it: if a woman in Heera Mandi is lucky, she will acquire a semi-permanent 'husband', a man who probably has a socially acceptable wife already but will provide for this second woman and take her, effectively, out of the business...for a while. Until he tires of her. And then she's back in it.
I pause and try to imagine what it must be like to have been traded in Heera Mandi for fifty years—for all your adult life and more. I can't possibly imagine it. And yet, in the shade of her tiny room, with its charpoy barely hidden behind a curtain, this woman, who is the same age as my mother, can still laugh and tease me because I don't have a man. (188)
But it's complicated. Brown keeps coming up against the fact that narrative subjects don't fit tidily into the 'victim' box she'd expected them to. Oh, some things are unambiguous: that these girls shouldn't be in a position of viewing lives as prostitutes as the natural order of things, for example. Within the reality of their lives, though, it's not the 'terrible decision' that the book flap makes it out to be.
Nena is thrilled—and I'm confused. I thought I was coming to Heera Mandi to document a terrible trade, and yet Nena is seemingly not being dragged into prostitution: at 14 she's embracing her family's business with enthusiasm. She's going to do what generations of girls in her family have done before her, and in twenty years' time she will be like her mother—abandoned and dependent upon the sale of her own teenage daughters to survive. But, for now, she's flattered that Moto wants to spend so much money on her. It's a reflection of her status as a beautiful, high-class dancing girl. Probably for the first time in her life, Nena is exercising a form of power, and she's enjoying it. (214–215)
Nothing has prepared me for the reality of this event. I don't know how far I should oppose the decision. I'm here to document life in Heera Mandi, not to intervene in it. In the social codes of Heera Mandi, Nena is not doing anything unusual. By the standards of the mohalla she's not a child: she's ready for "marriage" and she's ready to become a kanjri. I know this on an intellectual level, but it doesn't lessen my unease. I've become too deeply involved in the lives of the people I'm supposed to be researching; I'm no longer an objective observer but a participant in their world. I can't walk away from this situation without losing my integrity, but I can't stay and keep it either. (226–227)
When I write about prostitution and the trafficking of women in my office at the university, the issues seem clear, and yet here I am, in this dreadful place, witnessing a girl whom I am deeply fond of being trafficked to another country so she can be sold to a man who collects virgins. (234)
So Brown learns to look at things from the context of the culture she's observing. Doesn't make the fact of these girls' prostitution (or, perhaps more importantly, the fact that they don't see any other options) okay. Does make it a different conversation than she'd expected. And...sometimes Brown ends up adopting the values of the culture. Out walking with a woman intent on defying rules of propriety, she says: For the next few years I'll have to walk around these streets, and I can't afford to have my reputation compromised in this manner. I like Shamsa—she's refreshingly different and a loose cannon in a very rigid social context—but I'm not sure if she's actively challenging an unfair society and making a stand for women or if she's just utterly mad. Whatever the case, being associated with such a wild young woman puts me in danger (162). In some respects she wants Shamsa to rebel; in other respects she's too aware of what that rebellion might mean for her own status within the community to be comfortable with it.
I really, really, really wish Brown had given us more contextual detail. That is, there's a fair bit about culture and some history and so on, but I was left wondering just how common this life is (how many women in Pakistan? Is there one of these districts in every sizable town?) and how the industry compares to those in other countries and, well, more facts and numbers and details. More academia mixed in with the memoir, I suppose.
Still...kind of a cyclical, wandering book that tells the story a whole lot better than statistics alone could.
Other, brief notes:
If brightness, intelligence, and hard work were determinants of success in this world, Hasan would grow into an important man. The tragedy is that, barring some miracle, he'll run errands all his life, sink into heroin, or, if he has aspirations, he'll follow the example of other ambitious men in the mohalla and become a drug pusher or a pimp. (177)
"Can you read and write?" I ask her.
She laughs and shakes her head. "What a useless thing that is in this place." (189)
...a raped girl is bad for the family: it shows that they can't protect their woman; that they have little social standing; and that they're not respectable. It's worse for the victim because once a woman, or a girl—or a boy—is known as the target of a rape she becomes so despised, so shamed, so worthless that she turns into public property. No one is raped only once. (197)
Brown went to Pakistan as a researcher, but she ended up learning a great deal more than she expected. The story she tells is not an academic one, but rather a personal one; it's a gradual unfolding of the lives of a family living and working in the local prostitution district. It's a world where the trade is passed down from mother to daughter, although this is perhaps not prostitution as Westerners think of it: if a woman in Heera Mandi is lucky, she will acquire a semi-permanent 'husband', a man who probably has a socially acceptable wife already but will provide for this second woman and take her, effectively, out of the business...for a while. Until he tires of her. And then she's back in it.
I pause and try to imagine what it must be like to have been traded in Heera Mandi for fifty years—for all your adult life and more. I can't possibly imagine it. And yet, in the shade of her tiny room, with its charpoy barely hidden behind a curtain, this woman, who is the same age as my mother, can still laugh and tease me because I don't have a man. (188)
But it's complicated. Brown keeps coming up against the fact that narrative subjects don't fit tidily into the 'victim' box she'd expected them to. Oh, some things are unambiguous: that these girls shouldn't be in a position of viewing lives as prostitutes as the natural order of things, for example. Within the reality of their lives, though, it's not the 'terrible decision' that the book flap makes it out to be.
Nena is thrilled—and I'm confused. I thought I was coming to Heera Mandi to document a terrible trade, and yet Nena is seemingly not being dragged into prostitution: at 14 she's embracing her family's business with enthusiasm. She's going to do what generations of girls in her family have done before her, and in twenty years' time she will be like her mother—abandoned and dependent upon the sale of her own teenage daughters to survive. But, for now, she's flattered that Moto wants to spend so much money on her. It's a reflection of her status as a beautiful, high-class dancing girl. Probably for the first time in her life, Nena is exercising a form of power, and she's enjoying it. (214–215)
Nothing has prepared me for the reality of this event. I don't know how far I should oppose the decision. I'm here to document life in Heera Mandi, not to intervene in it. In the social codes of Heera Mandi, Nena is not doing anything unusual. By the standards of the mohalla she's not a child: she's ready for "marriage" and she's ready to become a kanjri. I know this on an intellectual level, but it doesn't lessen my unease. I've become too deeply involved in the lives of the people I'm supposed to be researching; I'm no longer an objective observer but a participant in their world. I can't walk away from this situation without losing my integrity, but I can't stay and keep it either. (226–227)
When I write about prostitution and the trafficking of women in my office at the university, the issues seem clear, and yet here I am, in this dreadful place, witnessing a girl whom I am deeply fond of being trafficked to another country so she can be sold to a man who collects virgins. (234)
So Brown learns to look at things from the context of the culture she's observing. Doesn't make the fact of these girls' prostitution (or, perhaps more importantly, the fact that they don't see any other options) okay. Does make it a different conversation than she'd expected. And...sometimes Brown ends up adopting the values of the culture. Out walking with a woman intent on defying rules of propriety, she says: For the next few years I'll have to walk around these streets, and I can't afford to have my reputation compromised in this manner. I like Shamsa—she's refreshingly different and a loose cannon in a very rigid social context—but I'm not sure if she's actively challenging an unfair society and making a stand for women or if she's just utterly mad. Whatever the case, being associated with such a wild young woman puts me in danger (162). In some respects she wants Shamsa to rebel; in other respects she's too aware of what that rebellion might mean for her own status within the community to be comfortable with it.
I really, really, really wish Brown had given us more contextual detail. That is, there's a fair bit about culture and some history and so on, but I was left wondering just how common this life is (how many women in Pakistan? Is there one of these districts in every sizable town?) and how the industry compares to those in other countries and, well, more facts and numbers and details. More academia mixed in with the memoir, I suppose.
Still...kind of a cyclical, wandering book that tells the story a whole lot better than statistics alone could.
Other, brief notes:
If brightness, intelligence, and hard work were determinants of success in this world, Hasan would grow into an important man. The tragedy is that, barring some miracle, he'll run errands all his life, sink into heroin, or, if he has aspirations, he'll follow the example of other ambitious men in the mohalla and become a drug pusher or a pimp. (177)
"Can you read and write?" I ask her.
She laughs and shakes her head. "What a useless thing that is in this place." (189)
...a raped girl is bad for the family: it shows that they can't protect their woman; that they have little social standing; and that they're not respectable. It's worse for the victim because once a woman, or a girl—or a boy—is known as the target of a rape she becomes so despised, so shamed, so worthless that she turns into public property. No one is raped only once. (197)
socialpsysteph's review against another edition
5.0
Wow, this book was so eye-opening. I knew nothing about this area and culture. It was fascinating and heartbreaking. As I was reading I kept feeling like I was reading about a historical period from hundreds of years ago instead of a contemporary history. I learned and felt so much while reading this book. I buddy-read this book with my friend Emily and it was wonderful to get to share our thoughts as we read.
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