Tales of Two Planets

February 1, 2020

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

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February 1, 2020
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 Sjón (Iceland). A powerful and timely collection on a topic that cannot be ignored.

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Starred review from March 1, 2020
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 Sn�r 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; Ga�l 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.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)