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  • Published: 20 July 2009
  • ISBN: 9780552776370
  • Imprint: Black Swan
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 192
  • RRP: $24.99
Categories:

Slumgirl Dreaming

My Journey to the Stars




From the slums to the stars - nine-year-old heroine of Danny Boyle's hit film SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE tells her story

My name is Rubina Ali. I don't know when my birthday is, and nor does my father, but I do know that I am nine years old.

Rubina is a one-in-a-million-star. After being plucked from among the five-hundred slum children who auditioned for Danny Boyle's multi-Oscar-winning film SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE, she saw her fairytale dream of stardom come true. But what does the future hold for a little girl now trapped between Hollywood glamour and the bleak poverty of her Mumbai slum?

Now she tells her own incredible story, from playing marbles with her friends beside the sewers of Garib Nagar , to dancing along to the Bollywood films she and her family watch on their old television set. Rubina brings alive a world of wastelands and rat-infested shanty dwellings, and shows us her home near the raliway line where she lives with her beloved father and siblings.
She tells us how her co-star came to be covered head to toe in chocolate, and how she came to meet a tall pale lady named Nicole Kidman. But how has this little girl's intimate world changed since Hollywood came knocking? And what will happen to her next?

Royalties from this book will be shared with the author and Medecins du Monde in India.

  • Published: 20 July 2009
  • ISBN: 9780552776370
  • Imprint: Black Swan
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 192
  • RRP: $24.99
Categories:

About the author

Rubina Ali

Rubina Ali grew up between a railway track and a sewer in a Mumbai slum. Lucky enough to audition for SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE, Rubina's life has changed for ever. Now nine years old, her shanty home has been demolished by officials making way for a railway station and she and her family are being re-housed. In 2008, Danny Boyle and the producers of the film set up the Jai Ho trust fund to provide for Rubina and her co-star, Azhar, and their familes, until they leave school. Rubina continues to fascinate the tabloid media and is in constant demand for international fund-raising events and guest appearances.

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