5/25/2023 0 Comments Girls Who Burn by MK PaganoHuman trafficking is alive and well in India, preying on young girls seeking to escape poverty and abuse at home or from forced marriages. As a reader, one groans to watch the girls fall victim to those who would (and do) make them slaves.Įven though the novel is fictional, the horrible things that happen to Savitha and Poornima are all too real for thousands of girls around the world. They come to recognize that their friendship is the only thing bringing color and vitality to lives sapped of joy by poverty. Savitha thinks often of a scrap of indigo fabric she wove, and Poornima holds precious a memory of her mother brushing her hair. It is heartbreaking to hear their inner thoughts, picking through thoughts and memories for anything remotely valuable, much as Savitha spent her girlhood picking through garbage heaps for scraps that might be valuable enough to sell. The novel is a painful, frustrating read as these two guileless young women discover and strive against some of the ugliest forces this world has to offer – poverty, disease, misogyny and generalized cruelty. As women living in poverty in India, Savitha and Poornima are abused at every turn in every way possible. The love they share for each other is, as Savitha considers at one point in the book, the only relationship she ever had that was not tangled up in fear. Girls Burn Brighter, by Shobha Rao, cover.
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