Slumgirl Dreaming

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.

Young Rubina is a one-in-a-million star. Plucked from among five hundred slumkids who auditioned for Danny Boyle’s multi-Oscar-winning film Slumdog Millionaire, she saw her fairy-tale dream of stardom come true. Now that she has stepped into the limelight, what will life hold for a young girl from the Mumbai slums?

Rubina tells her own incredible story, bringing to life a world of wastelands and rat-infested shanty dwellings, where she played marbles with her friends beside the sewers of Garib Nagar. She introduces her beloved father, a hardworking rickshaw puller, and her siblings. And then Rubina tells of the kindness of Danny Boyle and of the time she spent on the film sets–including the hilarious incident when her costar came to be covered in chocolate from head to toe.

After her brief encounter with red-carpet glamour, how will Rubina come to terms with the conditions in which she, her family, and her friends continue to live since Hollywood came knocking? This is her compelling story.