Literary Safari

Whenever I visit India, I admire the colorful and intricate art on the back of three-wheeler auto rickshaws that populate the streets of Pune. They bring back memories of my school days - how I used to crowd into a tight space alongside a dozen other girls with plaits and pigtails in blue and white school uniform pinafores. Our lunch boxes and thermoses used to hang off the sides and we’d clutch each other as the driver hurtled the vehicle over speed bumps and puddles of mud. (Sort of like this amazing flickr photo.)

While I was on my daily rickshaw ride, I never thought about things such as how long or hard the driver had to work to generate his daily income, what would happen if he got into an accident, or was unable to work. I never considered his family - perhaps even his daughter - who might have been my age, but was unable to go to school or ride a rickshaw to get from one destination to another. What was life like for her?

I was a very different type of rickshaw girl than Naima, the girl in Mitali Perkins’s most recent middle-grade novel Rickshaw Girl.

Naima is around 12/13 years old and lives in rural Bangladesh. She is the best alpana painter in her village and wants to use her artistic talent to help earn money for her family. One of Naima’s frustrations is that unlike her best friend Saleem, she can’t help her father drive his rickshaw because she’s a girl. Not only that, but she can’t work outside the house and her family can no longer afford to pay her school fees. One day, while talking to Saleem …

“You help your father,” she burst out. “Why can’t I help mine?”

Saleem shrugged. “You’re a girl. Girls stay home and help their mothers. Boys earn money and work with their fathers. That’s just the way it is.”

“But why? It’s not like that everywhere, Saleem. When I passed the tea stall this morning and peeked in at the television, I saw a Bangladeshi lady on the screen who was a doctor …”

Soon after this conversation, Naima has an epiphany: She is going to dress up as a boy and drive her father’s rickshaw–and help earn more money. Her plan doesn’t go as expected and she soon finds herself to blame for an accident that damages her father’s expensive, beautifully-decorated rickshaw. Instead of giving up, Naima comes up with an ambitious plan to repair and restore her father’s vehicle. In the process, she learns a few things about herself and about the opportunities that await her in her community. (So does her family.) {Warning: plot spoiler ahead} … Naima meets a woman who runs a rickshaw repair business (with the help of a loan from a women’s bank) and who offers to hire her.

Sure, there are other stories out there with gutsy girl protagonists in traditional societies. This one is different though - it is a timely and moving illustration of the grassroots changes that are occuring in rural environments around the world through microfinance institutions such as the Grameen Bank. Without sounding like propaganda or a case study, it provides a glimpse into how organizations like the Grameen Bank are beginning to make a difference in the lives of girls and women in Bangladesh.
We all need a little optimism, especially when it comes to stories about children in other cultures. Rickshaw Girl was a refreshing read. It was a good feeling to hold a book in my hand that highlighted change instead of just focusing on child labor, low literacy, and lack of opportunity (all topics that we hear enough about). It’s a timely novel, given the Nobel Peace Prize that was recently awarded to Muhammad Yunnus’s and Grameen Bank for “their efforts to create economic and social development from below.” With simple and spirited illustrations by Jamie Hogan, this book could be touching, memorable conduit for a literary study on the issues that face youth in developing countries and the hope that microfinance and other grassroots institutions are bringing to their lives.

More on rickhsaws and microfinance:

Gallery of Bangladeshi rickshaw art at Sepia Mutiny.
“Millions for Millions,” an article on two approaches to microfinance in The New Yorker.
Discussion Guide by Mitali Perkins.