Ideas: Bitter Harvest

So with the return to activity, I'm introducing a new category, called "Ideas". This is a catch-all, really, just to put out a lot of thoughts and things I've learned that have been percolating in my head during the hiatus.I will give this an underlying structure, however, by saying that these are mostly stories I've come across in the world at large that I want to incorporate somehow into my writing.

We start off with the idea of faceless villainy, as encountered every autumn in Uzbekistan. I've always been much more interested in grappling with villainy that is frustratingly insubstantial. I think it's much more meaningful to expose the impact and injustices of say, institutionalized racism, rather than the more obvious evil of a lynch mob, and it is much more satisfying to see it fully realized in a story as well.

This is a story of modern day, government sanctioned slavery, courtesy of the BBC.

While the obvious evil might be the overbearing and abusive supervisors, but in a story, this should only serve to put a human face on the unseen oligarchs who benefit from and perpetuate the system in the first place.

As an ironic epilogue to this story, the UN recently lauded Uzbekistan for reducing its reliance on child labour. Of course, what's left unsaid is that to make up for the shortfall in labour, even more government workers are coerced into the cotton fields.