Dance Lest We All Fall Down

Over Memorial Day weekend, a (largely inactive) BookCrossing friend gave me a copy of a book by one of her friends, with the idea that I could share it with a wider audience through my BookCrossing connections. The book, Dance Lest We All Fall Down, is a memoir, detailing the author's experiences living in the shantytowns of Salvador da Bahia in Brazil, and her subsequent efforts to create a non-profit organization, Bahia Street, to provide educational opportunities to the girls who might otherwise be trapped in the cycles of poverty that are so pervasive there. I thought the book was quite good, and it both illuminates the struggle for survival faced by these incredibly poor African-Brazilians and sheds some light on the difficulties involved in setting up and running a NGO that can actually have a meaningful impact. This book pretty clearly illustrates the huge gap between the "haves" and the "have-nots" around the world, and it was quite sobering to realize just how very well off we are here. I also had never given much thought to just how misguided we can be in our efforts to help those less fortunate. We tend to function from our own frame of reference, without consideration to the values, customs and needs of people in different societies, which severely hampers the effectiveness of our efforts. This book has given me a lot to think about.

The idea behind giving me this book was to have it travel as widely as possible. This is an incredible story, and Bahia Street is an amazing success story. Both should be more widely known. To that end, I'm hoping to organize a BookCrossing bookring for this book, to help it travel to as many people as possible. I've offered it first to anyone in my local BC in DC group that is interested in reading it, and then I'll have it travel on to the wider world of BookCrossing. If any of my friends here are interested in participating in this bookring, please let me know (either in the comments or by BookCrossing private message).

Cross-posting to bookcrossing