In the past five years, John Freeman, previously editor of Granta, has launched a celebrated international literary magazine, Freeman's,
and compiled two acclaimed anthologies that deal with income inequality
as it is experienced, first in New York and then throughout the United
States. In the course of this work, one major theme has come up
repeatedly- how climate change is making already dire inequalities much
worse, devastating further the already devastated. The effects of global
warming are especially disruptive in less well-off nations, sending
refugees to the US and elsewhere in the wealthier world, where they
often encounter the problems that perennially face outsiders- lack of
access to education, health care, decent housing, employment, and even
basic nutrition.
But the problems of climate change are not
restricted to those from the less developed world. American citizens are
suffering too, as the stories of distress resulting from recent
hurricanes testify- People who can't sell their home because the
building is on a flood plain, people who get displaced and cannot find
work, and more. And this doesn't even take on board the situation in
much of the Caribbean, or south of the Rio Grande in Mexico and Central
America.
Galvanized by his conversations with writers and
activists around the world, Freeman has engaged with some of today's
most eloquent writers, many of whom hail from the places under the most
acute stress. The response has been extraordinary- a literary all-points
bulletin of fiction, essays, poems, and reportage. Margaret Atwood
conjures with a dystopian future in three remarkable poems. Lauren Groff
takes us to Florida; Edwidge Danticat to Haiti; Tahmima Anim to
Bangladesh. Valeria Luiselli probes the refugee crisis at the US-Mexico
border, while Tash Aw takes us to Indonesia, Chinelo Okparanta to
Nigeria, and Arundhati Roy to India. As the anthology unfolds, cliches
fall away and we are brought closer to the real, human truth of what is
happening to our world, and the dystopia to which we are heading. These
are news stories with the emphasis on story, about events that should be
found in the headlines but often are not, about the most important
crisis of our times.
Tales Of Two Planets: Stories of Climate Change and Inequality in a Divided World - John Freeman, Margaret Atwood & Arundhati Roy
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