Nobody grubs in American trash dumps anymore (instead, they sort bottles into blue and green bins). But they did within Leonard Fritz’s lifetime, and they still do across the developing world. I’ve seen dumps like Leonard’s in India, Brazil, China, and Jordan, salted with impoverished people, often mothers and children, literally scraping at a living. The most famous is surely in Mumbai, movingly depicted in the film Slum-dog Millionaire, its orphans grubbing in search of just enough recyclable trash to exchange for food. I’ve seen the fights that Leonard describes, but only between children.
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