Tales of two planets : stories of climate change and inequality in a divided world

Tales of two planets Stories of climate change and inequality in a divided world

Book - 2020

"Building from his acclaimed anthology Tales of Two Americas, beloved writer and editor John Freeman draws together some of our greatest writers from around the world to help us see how the environmental crisis is hitting some of the most vulnerable communities where they live. 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 devast...ated. 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, clichés 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. LITERATURE'S BIGGEST STARS: TALES OF TWO PLANETS features work from some of the most important writers working today including Arundhati Roy, Edwidge Danticat, Margaret Atwood, and Lauren Groff. NEW WORK, NEW VOICES: All but two of the pieces in this collection of fiction, essays, and poems were commissioned by John Freeman exclusively for this book, and he presents some of the world's most exciting young voices including Daisy Johnson, Valeria Luiselli, Kayo Chingonyi, and Sayaka Murata. A GLOBAL VIEW OF OUR EXISTENTIAL CRISIS: Freeman brings together an international cast of brilliant writers to give readers a globe-spanning view of the climate crisis. Whether it's Sayaka Murata in Japan, Sjon in Iceland, Yasmine El Rashidi in Egypt, or Eka Kurniawan in Indonesia, we get an exhilarating range of experiences"--

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Subjects
Global environmental change > Literary collections.
Short stories.
Poetry.
Essays.
Genres
Short stories
Poetry
Essays
Published
New York : Penguin Books 2020.
Language
English
Item Description
Published by arrangement with OR Books LLC, New York, 2020.
Physical Description
xxv, 290 pages ; 21 cm
ISBN
9780143133926
  • Introduction
  • N64 35.378, W16 44.691 Iceland
  • Drowning in Reverse India
  • Tracking the Rain Canada
  • Riachuelo Argentina
  • Dusk United States
  • From Teotwawki Denmark
  • Survival Japan
  • The Astronomical Cost of Clean Air in Bangkok Thailand
  • A Downward Slope Colombia
  • The Floods Pakistan
  • Born Stranger Turkey
  • In This Phase in the 58Th American Presidentiad (United States) United States
  • The Storytellers of the Earth Eritrea/Ethiopia/Sudan/Britain/Belgium
  • The House of Osiris Egypt
  • A Calypso Libya/United States
  • Cavern Nigeria
  • The Unfortunate Place Bangladesh
  • Everything England
  • The Funniest Shit You Ever Heard Lebanon
  • Machandiz Haiti
  • Recording Is His Priority: On The Photographs of Lu Guang China
  • El Lago Guatemala
  • The Song of the Fireflies Burundi
  • The Rains Hawai'i
  • The Well Indonesia
  • A Blue Mormon Finds Himself among Common Emigrants India
  • Falling River, Concrete City Kenya
  • Spring in Wadi Delab, The Valley of the (Absent) Plane Tree Palestine
  • That House Aotearoa/New Zealand
  • Hawaiki Aotearoa/New Zealand
  • Bruno Sierra Leone
  • Sick World Mexico
  • The Psychopaths United States
  • Coral Watch Jamaica
  • On the Organic Diversity of Literature: Notes from My Little Astrophysical Observatory Iceland
  • The Imperiled South Korea
  • Contributors
  • Acknowledgments
Review by Booklist Review

Critic, poet, and editor of conscience Freeman presents his third "Tales of Two" anthology, each a leap up in scale from a focus on New York City to Tales of Two Americas (2017) to this gathering of essays, stories, and poems by 35 writers around the world expressing what it feels like to live with the mounting casualties of pollution, extinction, and climate change. Mariana Enriquez tells the story of Riachuelo, a poisoned river in Argentina. Mohammed Hanif contemplates the millions of overlooked Pakistanis displaced by floods. Eritrean refugee Sulaiman Addonia observes: "Refugees and the earth face the same marginalization, the same neglect, the same abuse." Andri Snær Magnason charts the disappearance of glaciers in Iceland; Anuradha Roy considers the shrinking ice in the Himalayas, the source of water for millions. Futuristic tales by Pitchaya Sudbanthad and Sayaka Murata envision the elite cocooned from environmental ravages. Lauren Groff's Florida story reckons with wastefulness and the vulnerability of the wild. Edwidge Danticat writes of toxic governmental corruption and a trash-fouled Haitian beach. Joy Williams protests ecocidal big-game hunting; Gaël Faye mourns lost forests and fireflies in Burundi. Yoked environmental and humanitarian crises in Egypt, Mexico, Hawaii, New Zealand, Bangladesh, Nigeria, and beyond are brought forward in masterful works elegiac, angry, and ironic in Freeman's clarion global chorus.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review

This anthology showcases personal responses to climate change through literature. Freeman (Tales of Two Americas) has collected 36 reports, essays, poems, and stories from writers such as Margaret Atwood, Lauren Groff, Edwidge Danticat, Mohammed Hanif, Tahmima Anam, Eka Kurniawan, and Chinelo Okparanta. Many of the articles in this varied anthology recall childhood play in remnants of wild landscapes, now erased by settlements or reduced to wasteland. The disruptive effects of unstable weather patterns are also a recurring theme. Most pieces take place in the present, though two stories inhabit a dystopian near future. In his introduction, Freeman predicts 300 million climate refugees will be on the move by the end of the century. While sadness and anger are prevalent moods, there is also dark humor. Aminatta Forna's essay "Bruno" describes how a long-captive chimpanzee led an escape of his troop from a fenced sanctuary for endangered wildlife, becoming a folk hero in Sierra Leone. VERDICT This work will suit readers curious about the long-standing and wide-ranging effects of climate change, as lived and experienced by writers around the world.--David R. Conn, formerly with Surrey Libs., BC

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

The founder of Freeman's and executive editor of Literary Hub gathers poems, essays, and short stories about global warming and inequality penned by writers from around the world.Climate change is the most urgent crisis now facing humanity. But as Freeman (Dictionary of the Undoing, 2019, etc.) notes in his introduction, "large numbers of the world's most powerful residents cannot grasp what it means." Assembling the creative work of respected writers from both the developed and developing world, Freeman offers a sobering meditation on the future challenges that everyone will face. In her bleakly stark poem "Tracking the Rain," Margaret Atwood reflects on how extreme drought is making itself felt in rich countries like her native Canada and how predictive technologies have been rendered useless by the randomness associated with climate change. In "Machandiz," Edwidge Danticat takes up the theme of planetary overheating. With the devastating clarity that has become her literary hallmark, she observes the struggle of people from her native Haiti to survive political and economic problems now compounded by the brutal onslaughts of nature. "The Well," a short story by Indonesian novelist Eka Kurniawan, tells the tragic story of how drought and floods destroyed possibilities for union between a boy and a girl from a tiny Indonesian village. Had nature been "kinder," none of the losses that make their love impossible would have occurred. South Korean writer Krys Lee offers a thought-provoking fictional take on the consequences of living in a damaged environment. Citizens of an unnamed Asian city live with the ever present knowledge that the poisoned air they breathe through purifying masks and indoor filters may one day kill them. Fierce and provocative, this diverse collection shows that climate change is not just a problem for developing nations. One day, it will become a matter of life and death for rich and poor alike. Other contributors include Lauren Groff (U.S.), Aminatta Forna (Sierra Leone), and Sjn (Iceland). A powerful and timely collection on a topic that cannot be ignored. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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