A People's History of Heaven

the long version

"In Bangalore, India, five young women fight to save their homes, which are really only shacks and lean-tos, in a slum named "Heaven," which the city wants to bulldoze in order to accommodate its growing tech industry"-- Welcome to Heaven, a thirty-year-old slum hidden between brand-new high-rise apartment buildings and technology incubators in contemporary Bangalore, one of India's fastest-growing cities. The community is made up of women, mothers and daughters who have been abandoned by their men when no male heir was produced. Five girls go to school together: Muslim, Christian, and Hindu; queer and straight. They love and accept one another unconditionally, pulling one another through crises and providing emotional, physical, and financial support. Together they wage war on the bulldozers that would bury their homes, and, ultimately, on the city that does not care what happens to them. -- adapted from jacket