Review: Aphro-ism: Essays on Pop Culture, Feminism, and Black Veganism from Two Sisters

Aphro-ism: Essays on Pop Culture, Feminism, and Black Veganism from Two Sisters by Aph Ko
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Pulling together posts they have published over the years on Black Vegans Rock, Sisters, Aph and Syl Ko offer up a compelling argument for veganism people of color and other marginalized groups. The crux of their argument is that the willingness for humans to arbitrarily decide who gets human treatment and who gets animal treatment (who is a free being and who is an enslave mass for labor, slaughter, and consumption) means that marginalized groups will always be vulnerable to being "dehumanized" and thus subjected to inhumane treatment. Until people reconsider their relationship with all animals, humans will continue to leave the door open to doing horrific harm to one another. What's powerful about their argument is that they do not just put this in simple terms of veganism--rather they deeply ground their argument in the theoretical and conceptual discourse around oppression, creating a throughline that is clear to follow from the policing of and disregard of black bodies to the environmental pollution disproportionately distributed to black neighborhoods. In the end, it's not a book about how to become a vegan, rather it's a philosophical undertaking to argue for a more profound consideration of where mistreatment starts and how it can be significantly reduced in our future.

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