Reviews of Habibi Funk 031, Kayatibu, and The Good Ones
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Revelatory depiction of life in Buenos Aires slum is a tragi-comic triumph
A South American shanty town
[Leon Petrosyan/Creative Commons]
SIMON DUFF relishes the cross contamination of Damien Hirst’s greatest hits by street artists from France and the US
In view of the grooming gangs inquiry, SIMON PARSONS feels the relevance of this powerful examination of trauma suffered at Medomsley Youth Detention Centre
JOHN GREEN doubts the motivations of a US war photographer who never questions why, or for whom, she is producing images of imperialist conflict
MARIA DUARTE reviews Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, Hedda, The Mastermind, and Regretting You
TONY CONWAY welcomes a thrilling and concise history of Hope not Hate, that is also a manual full of tactical advice
PAUL DONOVAN welcomes an inspiring account of living with deafness that has important lessons for the treatment of deaf people in today’s UK
Slum Virgin
by Gabriela Cabezon Camara
(Charco Press, £9.99)
IN THE El Poso slum of Buenos Aires things are starting to change for the better. Its inhabitants organise in special committees, they create a system of canals filled with large and glistening carp to eat, they grow their own vegetables and they are learning to be self-sufficient.
El Poso (“The Sediment”) is turning into a tiny utopia and all of this is apparently thanks to a strange cement Virgin Mary statuette — the Slum Virgin — that sends divine messages to the people through a “medium,” the transvestite prostitute Cleo, who renounces life on the game to try to save his shanty-town community from impending destruction.
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