Isabel J. Kim is a Korean-American speculative fiction writer based in New York City.
Occasionally a content creator will walk into Omelas and film a video while standing on one of the balconies of the Nice Houses or while sitting on one of Omelas’ beautiful beaches. They will talk about the history of Omelas in the same way that people talk about the Uyghurs situation in China, the concentration camps of the Third Reich, the comfort women imported from Korea by Japan, the Belgium Congo, the Atlantic Slave Trade in relation to the American South, and the refugees who sink in ships off the coast of Western Europe.
no mention of US bombing on NK for some reason ...
Or Palestine
Or the Texas border. Or Haiti. Or Jakarta. Or...
But its tangential in the end, because the whole point is that it IS just a thing we talk about obliquely. Not something we confront.
genuinely sus that she just skipped over the one that is dominating the news, ongoing, and actually real
The whole time reading it I was thinking that the kids dying was an explicit reference to Gaza and that Omelas was Israel, but I guess not.
Also nice holocaust relevatism, classic lib literary device.
Also wtf with the "Atlantic slave trade in relation to the American South" I assume Brazil is not real then.