In the tight-knit community known as Heaven, a ramshackle slum hidden
between luxury high-rises in Bangalore, India, five girls on the cusp
of womanhood forge an unbreakable bond. Muslim, Christian, and Hindu;
queer and straight; they are full of life, and they love and accept
one another unconditionally. Whatever they have, they share.
Marginalized women, they are determined to transcend their
surroundings.
When the local
government threatens to demolish their tin shacks in order to build a
shopping mall, the girls and their mothers refuse to be erased.
Together they wage war on the bulldozers sent to bury their homes,
and, ultimately, on the city that wishes that families like them
would remain hidden forever.
Elegant, poetic, and
vibrant, A People’s History of Heaven takes a clear-eyed
look at adversity and geography--and dazzles in its depiction of
these women’s fierceness and determination not just to survive, but
to triumph.