Writing The World: On Globalization

Globalism as a global exchange of art and ideas: essays, memoirs, fiction, and poetry by writers including Arundhati Roy, Bill McKibben, and Naomi Klein.

This collection of essays, memoirs, poems, stories, and artwork looks at globalization as a worldwide exchange of art and ideas. Writing the World focuses on the cultural realities of globalism -- the opportunities it provides to learn from other cultures. This knowledge, argue David Rothenberg and Wandee Pryor in their introduction, can be power: "When all of us learn enough about our differences to respect the diversity that exists, we will be unable to pretend we are the same. We will never accept the old innocence and ignorance bred by oppression and exploitation." For the contributors to Writing the World, to dream of the global village is to see the world not as a vast market but as a place of shared values and linked wonder."It is time to listen to the many literate voices the world speaks," say Rothenberg and Pryor. The voices of Writing the World range from Arundhati Roy on the "colonization of knowledge" in her essay "The Ladies Have Feelings, So... Shall We Leave It to the Experts?" to Naomi Klein's meditation on fences, ownership, and property. They include Bill McKibben on women farmers in Bangladesh, Hannes Westberg's account of being shot by Swedish police at a demonstration, James Barilla on invading and indigenous plant species in "The Aliens in the Garden," and many other vivid, compelling, and provocative writings that celebrate -- and illustrate -- "the poetry of cultural contact." Artists and photographers whose work appears in the book include Adam Clayman, Jenny Matthews, Richard Robinson, and Arpita Singh.

Deborah L. Kasman, M.D., M.A., is a Research Fellow at the Center for Clinical Bioethics at Georgetown University Medical Center. She has recently published articles in Academic Medicine,Western Journal of Medicine, and Annals of Internal Medicine.