Books Archive – Page 5 of 18

Confessions of an Animal Rights Terrorist

A searing memoir of an animal rights campaigner’s effort to stop Canada’s seal hunt, while handling domestic abuse and her partner’s long-term illness.

When Karen Levenson drove to a coffee shop in November 2009, she expected to meet a whistleblower with animal cruelty evidence. Instead, two government agents interrogated her about her connection to terrorists. She had none. Her campaign to end the commercial seal hunt involved nothing illegal. Neither did her deep-dive investigation to expose the government’s commercial sealing agenda. So why was the government harassing her? And if she couldn’t save Canada’s iconic seals, whom could she save? Could she save her husband from a deadly illness? Could she save herself from an abusive marriage? And how did she—a feminist—get into this mess to begin with?

Confessions of an Animal Rights Terrorist is at once an insider’s account of the decades-long attempt to end the commercial seal hunt, and a searingly honest memoir of domestic violence, caregiving, and following one’s life purpose. Infuriating, funny, and deeply moving, Confessions of an Animal Rights Terrorist reveals the extraordinary journey of an ordinary woman who comes face to face with breathtaking cruelty and does what she can to stop it.

“The moving, sometimes harrowing, and often very funny story of a life, a marriage, and a passionate commitment to ending the atrocity of hunting seals for fur. If you’ve ever found yourself speaking up for animals in the face of personal and professional adversity, Confessions will resonate.”—Ingrid Newkirk, author, Animalkind: Remarkable Discoveries about Animals and Revolutionary New Ways to Show Them Compassion

Read an excerpt on our blog.

Antiracism in Animal Advocacy

Sixteen essays on the importance of racial equity in animal advocacy.

Antiracism in Animal Advocacy: Igniting Cultural Transformation is a collection of writings by farmed animal protection advocates who are committed to exploring and prioritizing racial equity as they work to create a more just animal protection movement. The essayists were all attendees of Encompass’ 2020 Racial Equity Institutes.
Essays include:

“From Speaking Up for Animals to Becoming an Antiracist,” by Rachel Huff-Wagenborg
“Using Research and Data to Create an Inclusive Animal Rights Movement,” by Brooke Haggerty
“How My Cultural Identity Informs My Animal Advocacy,” by Unny Nambudiripad
“Animal Advocates: It’s Time We Move from Performance to True Antiracism,” by Aryenish Birdie
“Oppression without Hierarchy: Racial Justice and Animal Advocacy,” by Michelle Rojas-Soto
“How Racism in Animal Advocacy and Effective Altruism Hinders Our Mission,” by Michelle Graham

For more, see the video.

“An important, provocative, and accessible book. It has an urgent message for us all.”—Congressman Jamie Raskin

“I dare you to read this book and tell me that racial justice isn’t important in animal advocacy.”—Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the National Farmworkers Association and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom

“Antiracism in Animal Advocacy is at least three critically important things: (1) an honest reckoning of oppression in an anti-oppression movement, (2) a collective call to antiracist action from people across that movement, and (3) a clear vision for what a truly justice-based animal advocacy movement could—and ought—to be.”—Paul Gorski, Founder of the Equity Literacy Institute

“Even as a vegan of 20+ years, I hadn’t thought much about the intersection of race, equity, and animal advocacy. Every essay in this collection taught me something. Vital and thought-provoking.” —Vu Le, writer of NonprofitAF.com

“This crucial collection illuminates why racial justice in animal advocacy is imperative if we truly wish to end exploitation and oppression.”—David Bronner, Cosmic Engagement Officer (CEO) of Dr. Bronner’s

“An essential series of thoughtful, challenging, and vulnerable essays on the vital role antiracism work can and must play in animal advocacy. This is a must-read for anyone who understands that antiracism is important, but struggles to apply the ideas in a practical way to their work and activism.”—Evanna Lynch, actor and activist

“Acknowledging racism is a problem in the animal advocacy movement is fundamental towards addressing the issue. This collection of essays provides an excellent springboard for white people and their entities to do antiracist work while strengthening the infrastructure of the animal advocacy community.” —Omowale Adewale, founder of Black VegFest, and editor of Brotha Vegan

“I can tell you that I am encouraging everyone I know and work with to read these essays. To further animal advocacy, we must confront the limitations of a movement that has struggled to address racial equity.”—Monica Chen, Executive Director of Factory Farming Awareness Coalition

“An honest and compelling set of reflections about why we need to build an antiracist animal advocacy movement—and what it will take for us to do it.”—Jeff Sebo, author, Saving Animals, Saving Ourselves, and Director of the Animal Studies M.A. Program, New York University

“The animal protection movement, just like all advocacy movements, has its own progress to make to represent the global majority, and create a more inclusive movement. This book is that powerful and necessary first step towards change.”—Jennifer Brown, advocate and author, Inclusion (2017) and How to be an Inclusive Leader (2019)

Read an excerpt on our blog.

Kindling

A collection of beautifully poignant and moving poems and artwork from a talented artist who spent a summer interacting with the animals on an organic meat farm.

In the summer of 2019, artist and poet Linnea Ryshke worked as a laborer at an organic meat farm. She transformed what she saw, as well as the specific and acute interactions she had with the animals, into a series of poems, photographs, and artwork. Ryshke’s intimate, honest, and poignant account reflects what it means to confront the lives and deaths of individual creatures who are valued commodities. Through image and text, Kindling profoundly evokes experiences with animals that will leave a lasting impression on the reader.

“It is difficult to find the balance between art and activism. Linnea Ryshke’s, Kindling, weaves poetry, photography, and painting into a heartbreakingly beautiful book about finding and holding space for the more-than-human. She creates a lasting dialogue between embodiment and materiality, the didactic and the ambiguous, and art and activism that avoids the trap of overt sentimentality. Kindling provides us that elusive and magical space in between, where empathy and change can flourish and grow.”—Kathryn Eddy, artist activist and co-editor of The Art of the Animal: Fourteen Women Artists Explore the Sexual Politics of Meat

“So many poets use non-human animals as metaphors, motivators, comforts. Linnea Ryshke takes a refreshingly different tack in her work: She sees other animals. And she doesn’t just see, she witnesses. She shares with us using language that is apt, deft, unflinching, breathtaking. But Ryshke’s empathy and craft aren’t ends in themselves; they lead us where we desperately need to go: a kinder world. Yes, art can do that. Yes, this art does that.”—Gretchen Primack, poet and author of Kind

“Kindling is a book that echoes in the reader long after closing the book. The images and poetry of Linnea Ryshke lead us to not only reckon with the violence perpetuated against animals, but to witness their resistance and agency. Gentle yet piercing, Kindling achieves what so much of our culture fails in: seeing animal others without possessing them. What emerges from that view is a silent yet powerful demand to, in Ryshke’s words, ‘know them as kin, not kindling.'”—Terike Haapoja, artist

“Kindling is unlike any work I have read. It is a book for the senses— visceral—and meant to be breathed in, if you are brave. It reveals Linnea Ryshke as scholar-empath-artist-poet. She weaves together drawings, photographs and words, asking us to see, hear and understand oneness with all living beings. It is wild—delving into experiment and offering the reader an experience. To read Kindling is to take passage through gore and truth. We are asked to muster the courage to look, to digest the words, to see anew.”—Colleen Plumb, photographer with her most recent book, Thirty Times a Minute

“In her unique volume Kindling, artist, animal activist, and ethnographer Linnea Ryshke uses observational research to skillfully construct an empathetic space within which readers encounter animals who are essentially invisible in our culture: those raised for food. Ryshke was involved in the daily care of the animals up until their deaths. Through her poetry, she traces the path of her emotions, her attempts to make empathetic connections, and her own burn out and aversion as she exhausts her reservoirs of compassion navigating the inevitable path with these animals. Ryshke’s fearless willingness to turn toward death rather than away from it, her inclination to employ curiosity when confronted by ideologies so different from her own, and her attempts to establish a bridge of compassion with beings whose life experience she was powerless to change, all make this beautiful book a valuable companion for facing the challenges of our own provocative and demanding times. Blending art and ethnographic research, Kindling is an ideal addition to the animal studies, critical animal studies, art, literature, or ethics classroom.”—Julia Schlosser, lecturer in the Art department at California State University, Northridge and the curator for RememberingAnimals.art

Karavan Kitchen

A beautifully illustrated Middle Eastern vegan cookbook, an introduction to the cultures of the region, and an examination of the ongoing refugee crises.

Karavan Kitchen is a beautifully illustrated cookbook packed with delicious recipes for a wide range of vegan dishes throughout the Middle East—whether salads, mezze plates, main courses, the enormous variety of grains, sweet desserts, or beverages. Karavan Kitchen is also an evocative introduction to the many diverse cultures of the region and an eye-opening and compelling examination of the refugee crises caused by the conflicts in Syria, Libya, Yemen, and Somalia. Soraya Beheshti demonstrates how food is often the central connection many refugees have to their native countries and a means of creating community even when forced to live in difficult conditions many miles from home.

Grief Is Love

Grief Is Love is quite simply a heaven-sent balm for broken hearts.
This short but powerful book takes you through the tragedy that is grief’s arrival and to its long reverberation on the rest of your life.

“The beginning of grief is overwhelming. Everything must stop as you attempt to absorb what has happened, which is impossible. You cannot fathom it. There is little to no comprehension at first. Instead, a pervasive numbness descends over your mind, body, and soul.”

In the space of eleven months, Jennifer Flowers lost her husband of thirty-three years and their son, Jonpaul. Grief bust her heart wide open. Grief Is Love is a hard-won, honest, and profoundly sensitive guide for anyone who has lost someone dear to them, and a companion as you move through the stages of grief.

Read an excerpt on our blog.

The Supremacist Syndrome

A careful and compelling examination of the human supremacism that underlies ideologies such as anti-Semitism, genocide, racism, misogyny, and cruelty to animals.

Proponents of human exceptionalism claim that only humans possess certain morally significant capacities, and as a result are entitled to be treated better than members of all other species. In the last fifty years, scientists have discovered how these capacities are shared by other species, which only raises the questions of how and why we evade responsibility for inhumane behavior, not only to animals but to one another. To answer these questions, Peter Marsh examines three different ideologies: ethnonationalist supremacism (the Holocaust in Hungary), racial supremacism (the rule of King Leopold II of Belgium in the Congo), and gender-based supremacism (men’s treatment of women in Victorian and Edwardian England). He shows how supremacists applied mechanisms of moral disengagement to legitimize and evade personal responsibility for oppressing and exploiting members of a less-powerful group.

Marsh considers whether these different types of supremacism have common features and compares them to how we treat animals to examine whether that, too, causes unjustified harm to members of a weaker group and is wrong in the same way racism, sexism, and other supremacist ideologies are. Finally, he asks what we can do to overcome human supremacism and other supremacistideologies, providing practical examples of cross-cultural collaboration, humane education, veganism, and extending concepts of identity beyond borders of culture, race, and nation.

For more information, and to read excerpts of this book, visit the author’s website.

“In this absorbing, passionately argued, and deeply researched volume, independent scholar Peter Marsh examines the supremacist thinking that underlies the structures of oppression, and argues for equity, engagement, and reciprocity among peoples and in relationship to other animals.”—Jim Mason, author An Unnatural Order

Read an excerpt on our blog.

Kind

A collection of poems and images that reflect our complex relationship with other-than-human animals.

Kind is the kind of poetry book that makes you think differently about our world and the beings that inhabit it. Primack explores all facets of our lives with other beings—the beauty, the tragedy, and the absurdity that surrounds her existence. Kind cuts to one’s emotional core to make us think and feel.

“It is this poet’s calling to hold kindness and its opposite in tension. What is that opposite? The poems in this volume offer unsettling answers. With Gretchen Primack’s poems, the absence of kindness causes a quaking in our bodies. A lyrical language of the present tense evokes a fierce and tender impatience with what should never have been settled for.”—Carol J. Adams, author of The Sexual Politics of Meat

“If it is true that one knows oneself best by observing how one treats others then this book of poems by Gretchen Primack is essential reading. Read these poems for the truth they tell about our relationship to and treatment of the creatures we take to be our property; read this book and ponder its many questions, for example ‘Who are the beasts?’ and ‘What can I do?’”—Kazim Ali, author of The Voice of Sheila Chandra

“How often does one get starstruck by a poet? When I read Gretchen Primack’s animal poems, I was starstruck instantly. How could someone crystallize my own feelings about animals and humanity so beautifully, so powerfully, and so poignantly? Primack seems only capable of writing poetry so damn good that you will find yourself wanting to read it aloud to everyone you know who shares your compassion for animals…and to everyone you know who doesn’t.”—Marisa Miller Wolfson, filmmaker of Vegucated

“Kind—an unassuming, everyday word, a word sprung from the Old English kin, meaning family—stitches this book together because each poem herein is an aching missive written to animals, poems of love and protest that refuse to bow down to our order of what is worthy and what is less than, to separate what is ‘born for love or commerce,’ to set apart what is human versus not. Each poem dissolves and reshapes these divisions with inexhaustible empathy and a ferocious determination that pleads— yea, even demands—kindness for all living beings.”—Nickole Brown, author of To Those Who Were Our First Gods

“Gretchen Primack knows that animals ‘cannot forget hell for even a day, and so [she] cannot either.’ She is infused with an abnormal amount of empathy, which fills her heart with kindness, awe, and hope. She wants to live ‘somewhere else, somewhere kind,’ so she spends her time shifting into that place where every being matters, and she takes us with her.”—Sharon Gannon, author of Magic is a Shift in Perception

Read an excerpt on our blog.

Brotha Vegan

Black vegan men discuss masculinity, sexuality, race, diet, health, fatherhood, social justice, animal rights, and the environment in this companion volume to Sistah Vegan.

In 2010, Lantern published Sistah Vegan: Black Women Speak on Food, Identity, Health, and Society, a landmark anthology edited by A. Breeze Harper that highlighted for the first time the diversity of vegan women of color’s response to gender, class, body image, feminism, spirituality, the environment, diet, and nonhuman animals. Now, a decade later, its companion volume, Brotha Vegan, unpacks the lived experience of Black men on veganism, fatherhood, politics, sexuality, gender, health, popular culture, spirituality, food, animal advocacy, the environment, and the many ways that veganism is lived and expressed within the Black community in the United States.

Edited by Omowale Adewale—founder of Black Vegfest, and one of the leading voices for racial and economic justice, animal rights, and black solidarity—Brotha Vegan includes interviews with and articles by folks such as Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, Doc (of Hip Hop is Green), chef Bryant Terry, physicians Anteneh Roba and Milton Mills, DJ Cavem, Stic of Dead Prez, Kimatni Rawlins, and many others. At once inspiring, challenging, and illuminating, Brotha Vegan illustrates the many ways it is possible to be vegan and reveals the leading edge of a “veganized” consciousness for social renewal.

Featuring:
Eric Adams—Baba Brother-D B. Aammaa Nubyahn—Michael Barber—Scott “Burnhard” Bernard—Ra-leek Born—Lord Cannon (a.k.a. LordMurkEl)—Anthony Carr—Fred “Doc” Beasley II—Jae Yahkèl Estes, XVX—Khnum “Stic” Ibomu—Kevin Jenkins—Malcolm Jones (malc)—Charles McCoy—Kezekial McWhinney-StLouis—Milton Mills, M.D.—Stewart Devon Mitchell—Brandon Morton—Mutulu Olugbala, a.k.a. M-1—Donald Peebles—Kimatni Rawlins—Anteneh Roba, M.D.—Richard W. Rogers Jr.—Bryant Terry—Donald Vincent (“Mr. Hip”)—Dr. Ietef “DJ Cavem” Vita—Torre Washington

Read an excerpt on our blog.

An Unnatural Order

A fully revised and updated version of the classic work on the origins of animal agriculture and our longstanding contempt for and hatred of nature and animals.

In 1993, Jim Mason, journalist, advocate, and pioneering figure in the contemporary animal advocacy movement, published An Unnatural Order—a sweeping overview of the origins of our destruction of the natural world and its creatures, from the dawn of agriculture to the present day. Now fully revised and updated to reflect greater awareness of, and urgency regarding, the climate crisis, An Unnatural Order offers an expansive overview of what has changed (both for good and for ill) and what has unfortunately remained the same.

His message is clear: until we grapple with the question of the animal, and our relationship with animality and the natural world, we will not be able to confront the consequences of our perpetuation of environmental destruction, biodiversity collapse, and our alienation from the Earth and one another. As brilliantly polemical and richly descriptive as it was when it was published almost three decades ago, this new version of An Unnatural Order is sure to excite a passionate debate about our role in either saving the ecosystems upon which all species (including our own) rely, or bringing it all to an end.

“Jim Mason’s classic work on the ancient origins of our wish to harm animals and others made a huge impact on me when I read it years ago. Now revised and updated, An Unnatural Order retains its power to provoke, inspire, and galvanize us toward action.”—Peter Marsh, author, The Supremacist Syndrome

“Mason’s slant on history—the human–animal orbit—is clever and subversive.”—Kirkus Reviews

“An eloquent, important plea for a total rethinking of our relationship to the animal world. Mason analyzes the West’s ‘dominionist’ worldview, which exalts humans as overlords and owners of other life. . . . His powerfully argued manifesto will change many readers’ attitudes toward hamburgers, animal experimentation, hunting, and circuses.”—Publishers Weekly