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Feb. 6th, 2011 02:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
furyofvissarionSistah Vegan: Black Female Vegans Speak on Food, Identity, Health, and Society - Edited by A. Breeze Harper. This anthology is ground-breaking: the first book containing the voices of North American female black vegans; as far as I know, it's the first POC vegan anthology in general. It's an incredibly important book for that reason, & deserves a large audience. It's beautiful, compassionate, fierce & at times funny as well.
What I found striking, & what I suspect many readers will too, was how many of the contributors explicitly linked their veganism to other anti-oppression causes (usually, but not exclusively, anti-racism). As a POC vegan I do too, & so this wasn't surprising to me, but I know that many POC meat-eaters deride veganism as a white thing that fails to take into consideration other oppressions (& of course there are many vegans who unfortunately live their veganism in this way). I think this book does a lot to gainsay that impression. I was, though, surprised by how many people were genuinely moved by PETA's comparison of the treatment of animals to slavery; that campaign was incredibly controversial & many African Americans (as well as other POCs) found it offensive. It's worth remembering that vegans of color are not a monolith, of course; it's mentioned up front that not all of the Sistah Vegans agree with each other--nor should they have to! Nor should readers. I appreciated the intersectionality throughout the book: most (but not all) contributors seemed aware of the classism in much vegan rhetoric about how easy & convenient it is to be vegan, ignoring realities such as poverty & food deserts. I was a little uncomfortable with some of the health rhetoric, which I thought edged at times towards fatphobia--this isn't a tendency exclusive to this book, of course. Anyway--well worth a read.
Delusions of Gender: The Real Science Behind Sex Differences - Cordelia Fine. This debunks myths about how gender differences are the result of hardwired differences in our brains. Fine points out how much of these conclusions are drawn from bad science (shoddily run studies, deceptive reporting of results, etc.). She also points out how pervasive gender socialization is, & how the half-hearted attempts of liberal-leaning parents to provide a "gender-neutral" atmosphere are doomed to fail, because their efforts are nowhere near as forceful as the gender stereotypes that you practically breathe in the air. It's not that "I tried to give Tommy a doll & he just didn't like it!" or "Tiffany just likes pink!"; it's that you probably aren't aware of how insidious these things are, nor are you probably fully committed to eradicating them (being steeped in them, most likely, yourself). The book is limited to a (large) subset of Western culture, something which Fine admits but also sometimes seems unaware of (I mean, there are overlaps, but lots of immigrants to Western nations come from cultures that have differing views on gender, etc.).
A Map of Home - Randa Jarrar. Funny & poignant coming of age novel. Nidali, who's Egyptian-Greek on her mom's side & Palestinian on her dad's, is born in Boston in the 1970s. She grows up mostly in Kuwait, until the invasion by Iraq leads them to move to Egypt & then, when Nidali's in high school, to Texas. The novel is peppered with sharp observations about gender & race & nationality & class & immigration & home. Particularly of note to me was the tension between family problems (her dad is both emotionally & physically abusive) & how these problems will be used by (US, in this case) society to draw conclusions about Arab men & masculinity in general.
What I found striking, & what I suspect many readers will too, was how many of the contributors explicitly linked their veganism to other anti-oppression causes (usually, but not exclusively, anti-racism). As a POC vegan I do too, & so this wasn't surprising to me, but I know that many POC meat-eaters deride veganism as a white thing that fails to take into consideration other oppressions (& of course there are many vegans who unfortunately live their veganism in this way). I think this book does a lot to gainsay that impression. I was, though, surprised by how many people were genuinely moved by PETA's comparison of the treatment of animals to slavery; that campaign was incredibly controversial & many African Americans (as well as other POCs) found it offensive. It's worth remembering that vegans of color are not a monolith, of course; it's mentioned up front that not all of the Sistah Vegans agree with each other--nor should they have to! Nor should readers. I appreciated the intersectionality throughout the book: most (but not all) contributors seemed aware of the classism in much vegan rhetoric about how easy & convenient it is to be vegan, ignoring realities such as poverty & food deserts. I was a little uncomfortable with some of the health rhetoric, which I thought edged at times towards fatphobia--this isn't a tendency exclusive to this book, of course. Anyway--well worth a read.
Delusions of Gender: The Real Science Behind Sex Differences - Cordelia Fine. This debunks myths about how gender differences are the result of hardwired differences in our brains. Fine points out how much of these conclusions are drawn from bad science (shoddily run studies, deceptive reporting of results, etc.). She also points out how pervasive gender socialization is, & how the half-hearted attempts of liberal-leaning parents to provide a "gender-neutral" atmosphere are doomed to fail, because their efforts are nowhere near as forceful as the gender stereotypes that you practically breathe in the air. It's not that "I tried to give Tommy a doll & he just didn't like it!" or "Tiffany just likes pink!"; it's that you probably aren't aware of how insidious these things are, nor are you probably fully committed to eradicating them (being steeped in them, most likely, yourself). The book is limited to a (large) subset of Western culture, something which Fine admits but also sometimes seems unaware of (I mean, there are overlaps, but lots of immigrants to Western nations come from cultures that have differing views on gender, etc.).
A Map of Home - Randa Jarrar. Funny & poignant coming of age novel. Nidali, who's Egyptian-Greek on her mom's side & Palestinian on her dad's, is born in Boston in the 1970s. She grows up mostly in Kuwait, until the invasion by Iraq leads them to move to Egypt & then, when Nidali's in high school, to Texas. The novel is peppered with sharp observations about gender & race & nationality & class & immigration & home. Particularly of note to me was the tension between family problems (her dad is both emotionally & physically abusive) & how these problems will be used by (US, in this case) society to draw conclusions about Arab men & masculinity in general.
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Date: 2011-02-09 11:45 am (UTC)I liked Sistah Vegan because it showed patterns and differences in how and why people do things, by letting people tell their stories. I was especially interested in the piece by the woman who worked for peta, however briefly. Then there were the reasons from spirituality, from philosophy, for health, etc. etc. Such good stories.
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Date: 2011-02-20 03:39 pm (UTC)