Nancy Kress On Global Inequality And Poverty

by
Robert Vienneau
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I picked up the novel that the following quotation is from because I think I recall Kress participating in conversations on Usenet years ago. This novel ended up more a political argument than I expected. It is for Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), done right. We should rather strive for plants for food resistant to insects, not resistant to pesticides, for example. I assume that Kress agrees with her heroine.

"He had spent the two-week winter vacation from school, which somehow got extended to nearly another week, with Jake in Los Angeles...

He left an eleven-year old nerd, dress in Levi's, a tee that said CHESS PLAYERS HAVE GREAT MOVES, and a baseball cap. He returned looking like a thirty-two-year-old investment banker trying to be cool, dressed in a $300 Ferragamo zip-front polo, designer jeans, and sockless shoes that cost more than my weekly salary. He carried a state-of-the-art laptop that could probably have moved satellites in orbit. Jake had invested in an independent production company that had struck movie gold with two wildly popular films about aliens who battled Earth. Jake was rich.

'Wow, look at you,' I said, not approvingly.

Ian could always read me. 'You don't like it. Dad said you wouldn't. But just because some of the world isn't blessed doesn't mean that we shouldn't enjoy the facts that through our own efforts, we are.'

I stared at him. No way that was Ian talking, or even Jake. I asked, 'Who is she?'

'Who's who?' But he shifted from one foot to the other as we faced each other at the SeaTac arrival gate. Passengers streamed past.

'Your dad's new girlfriend. It's okay, Ian, he's an adult. So am I.'

He turned sulky. 'Sage Scott.'

I blinked. She was a huge international star with more beauty than talent. 'Well,' I said heartily, 'that's fine. But -'

'Mom,' Ian blurted out, 'don't hassle me because I like money, okay.'

'Money is useful,' I said, and hugged him again.

But it wasn't that easy. With almost-teenagers, it never is. There were times during the next week when I wanted to apologize to my lone-dead parents for my own teen years.

Ian was disdainful of his old school and wanted to transfer to one that had a good lacrosse team.

Ian was disdainful of his old clothes.

Ian refused to go with me to the soup kitchen where once a week for years now, we'd helped feed the homeless.

When Ian said, 'People can always feed themselves if they just try, just like the rest of the world could if it got its act together. All you have to do is grow food,' I'd had enough. Arguments weren't going to do it here. He needed immersion learning.

'Pack up your designed duds,' I said. 'We're taking a field trip.'

'Where?'

'Overseas.'

'I don't want to. Mom, I missed enough school already.'

'Like you really mind that. And we'll only be gone for a long weekend, so pack up.'

He was eleven, and eleven-year-olds don't have household veto. Not in my house. Ian went with me. Sulky, barricaded during the long flight behind laptop and earbuds and resentment, he went.

Chennai was a huge, prosperous commercial and cultural center in southern India. A tourist draw, it had the gorgeous Kapaleeswarar Templd, museums, parks, a British fort dating from the Raj, the Tamil film industry. That was not the Chennai I took Ian to.

I'd arranged for a guide who, along with an armed bodyguard, took us to outlying slums, to coastal villages flooded by the rising sea, to fields so ravaged by inland drought or coastal salt water that they could grow nothing. Ian saw ragged, starving children living in tin boxes, beggars whose bones stuck out sharp as chisels, a fight over food on an aid truck that left two people lying bloody in the road. Each night I brought him back to Chennai to eat rich food in expensive restaurants. I spent the money from my divorce freely, and I didn't have to say a word.

Sweating in the heat, Ian said, 'Sage was wrong. Those people - they can't grow enought food.'

'No. Each year, childhood deaths from malnutrition rise sharply, and it's only going to get worse. The need for food is projected to rise 70 percent over the next thirty years. And as to poverty - well, a handful of super-rich people have as much money as the whole bottom half of the world's population put together.'

'That can't be right.'

'It's not right.'

'I mean, that can't be correct.'

'It is.'

He said nothing more, staring at a child digging through a stinking garbage dump for something to eat. Back at the hotel, after a shower, I saw him checking statistics on his laptop. At dinner he stared at the exquisitely cooked food on his plate.

'Mom, what can we do?'

'Donate. Understand the situation. Care.'

He picked up his fork, put it down again, scowled. But not, this time at me. I thought I saw down beginning on his upper lip - could that be true? So soon?

'I can sell a lot of my stuff,' Ian said, 'and donate the money.'

'That's your choice, honey,' I said. 'But keep what you really need. The trick is to decide what that is.'" -- Nancy Kress, Sea Change, Tachyon Publications, 2020.