My Reading Experiment (Book #6 ) - Floating City
Target: 100 books
Current: 6 books
Sometimes, I don't get enough time to read books. Sometimes, I read them, but I don't get time to tell the world that I did. That's kind of what happened here. I read a bunch of books, and now I have a backlog of (I hate to call them) book reviews. I don't remember if I said this before, but here it is anyway - I don't think that my "reviews" mean anything about the book itself. People who write books are a brave kind, putting themselves out there for the world to judge them. What I write about is just what my experience with a book was. I'm pretty certain that I cannot tell apart mediocre writing from good even if it was a skunk lifting its tail in front of my face.
Books by Indian authors always catch my eye. English is the only language I read books in, and there is a gross under-representation of my culture in English literature. Sure, there are the academics, and the occasional Salman Rushdie and Arundhati Roy, but what about other genres? Where is the ChickLit, I say?
#6
Floating City
- Sudhir Venkatesh
Liked it, Non-fiction, Underground, Drugs, Prostitution, Art, Race, Class
It is not something that one often thinks about, if they are not already involved somehow - drugs, and prostitution. What do you know about the life of someone whom you come across frequently at the train station, or at your office? Come to think of it, what do you really know about your neighbour?
Sudhir's book takes us through his journey of befriending drug dealers, adult video store owners, sex workers, madams, and johns. We get some insight into why people do what they do, and what the unwritten rules are that they need to abide by in order to survive in the underground world. Who does business with whom? How does race and class determine which areas in the City one can peddle their goods in? What kind of revenue are people dealing with? What is the nexus between this mysterious underground world and the world of art? Why is it that some women, who have the world offered to them on a silver platter, still choose to enter the more sophisticated escort service system? Do these people need to be helped? Do they want to be helped? What kind of support systems do these people have? When they decide to, how do they get out of it all? These are some of the questions that are touched upon in the book. An insightful read, especially if you haven't read anything on the subject before, as was my case. I came away with this image of a population connected by a social network of a different kind.
"Sex brings people together, literally but also socially. It seemed to weave its threads all through this hidden world, bringing the community together in a thousand different ways. South Asians clerked and managed the video stores. West African men stood outside dance clubs to recruit johns. The wives of those West Africans provided day care to mothers who sold sexual services. Mexicans and Central Americans toiled clandestinely inside the video parlors and clubs as cleaners and laborers. And since the sex workers I was meeting came from every corner of the world - from Europe and Africa and Australia, from China and Singapore and Brazil - you could say the invisible thread of sex was weaving the whole world together."
Current: 6 books
Sometimes, I don't get enough time to read books. Sometimes, I read them, but I don't get time to tell the world that I did. That's kind of what happened here. I read a bunch of books, and now I have a backlog of (I hate to call them) book reviews. I don't remember if I said this before, but here it is anyway - I don't think that my "reviews" mean anything about the book itself. People who write books are a brave kind, putting themselves out there for the world to judge them. What I write about is just what my experience with a book was. I'm pretty certain that I cannot tell apart mediocre writing from good even if it was a skunk lifting its tail in front of my face.
Books by Indian authors always catch my eye. English is the only language I read books in, and there is a gross under-representation of my culture in English literature. Sure, there are the academics, and the occasional Salman Rushdie and Arundhati Roy, but what about other genres? Where is the ChickLit, I say?
#6
Floating City
- Sudhir Venkatesh
Liked it, Non-fiction, Underground, Drugs, Prostitution, Art, Race, Class
It is not something that one often thinks about, if they are not already involved somehow - drugs, and prostitution. What do you know about the life of someone whom you come across frequently at the train station, or at your office? Come to think of it, what do you really know about your neighbour?
Sudhir's book takes us through his journey of befriending drug dealers, adult video store owners, sex workers, madams, and johns. We get some insight into why people do what they do, and what the unwritten rules are that they need to abide by in order to survive in the underground world. Who does business with whom? How does race and class determine which areas in the City one can peddle their goods in? What kind of revenue are people dealing with? What is the nexus between this mysterious underground world and the world of art? Why is it that some women, who have the world offered to them on a silver platter, still choose to enter the more sophisticated escort service system? Do these people need to be helped? Do they want to be helped? What kind of support systems do these people have? When they decide to, how do they get out of it all? These are some of the questions that are touched upon in the book. An insightful read, especially if you haven't read anything on the subject before, as was my case. I came away with this image of a population connected by a social network of a different kind.
"Sex brings people together, literally but also socially. It seemed to weave its threads all through this hidden world, bringing the community together in a thousand different ways. South Asians clerked and managed the video stores. West African men stood outside dance clubs to recruit johns. The wives of those West Africans provided day care to mothers who sold sexual services. Mexicans and Central Americans toiled clandestinely inside the video parlors and clubs as cleaners and laborers. And since the sex workers I was meeting came from every corner of the world - from Europe and Africa and Australia, from China and Singapore and Brazil - you could say the invisible thread of sex was weaving the whole world together."
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