The two authors, Chitra Divakaruni and Peter Singer, have two very different opinions on world hunger and poverty. However it is hard to compare them, because while Singer is discussing hunger and poverty and morals and philosophy and, well, pretty much everything, Divakaruni is only talking about one specific thing: not embargoing child labor. But the gist is, Singer wants you to place basic morals above all else, while Divakaruni wants you to look beyond the heartwarming hypothetical stuff and think about the logic of a problem.
I think that Divakaruni has a more valid point of view. She grew up in India, surrounded by poverty and child labor. Meanwhile, Singer is just a rich philosopher sitting in his armchair passing judgement on the rest of the world. And also, there is immediately a reader bias towards Divakaruni, just because of her third-world-sounding name. However, she seems like the more biased author, with her family having had a child in employment when she was growing up. But on the other hand, of course Singer can talk all he wants about sacrifice and charity; he's a rich and famous author. But to many Americans, even his suggested $200 is still a lot of money, and losing an antique car is just on entirely new level.
Ultimately, I would agree with Divakaruni's viewpoint. I think that while us Americans can afford to be moral and charitable and "free" (I believe no one is truly free, but now is not the time to get into that), in the rest of the world, one has to do the most logical and practical thing, not necessarily what is "right" by our standards. Although one last thing that I recognize as I'm writing this is that I'm biased against Singer. I never have really tolerated armchair philosophers who feel they have the right to judge others. Also, his description said he helped found the animal rights movement, meaning he is responsible to subjecting our world to PETA (ugh). But even with the hindsight recognition of my bias, it does not change my original standing.
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