Sistah Vegan: Black Female Vegans Speak on Food, Identity, Health and Society

Citation:

Harper, A. Breeze, ed. 2010. Sistah Vegan: Black Female Vegans Speak on Food, Identity, Health and Society. Brooklyn, NY: Lantern Books.

Author: Breeze A. Harper

Annotation:

Summary:

Sistah Vegan is a series of narratives, critical essays, poems, and reflections from a diverse community of North American black-identified vegans. Collectively, these activists are de-colonizing their bodies and minds via whole-foods veganism. By kicking junk-food habits, the more than thirty contributors all show the way toward longer, stronger, and healthier lives. Suffering from type-2 diabetes, hypertension, high blood pressure, and overweight need not be the way women of color are doomed to be victimized and live out their mature lives. There are healthy alternatives. Sistah Vegan is not about preaching veganism or vegan fundamentalism. Rather, the book is about how a group of black-identified female vegans perceive nutrition, food, ecological sustainability, health and healing, animal rights, parenting, social justice, spirituality, hair care, race, gender-identification, womanism, and liberation that all go against the (refined and bleached) grain of our dysfunctional society. Thought-provoking for the identification and dismantling of environmental racism, ecological devastation, and other social injustices, Sistah Vegan is an in-your-face handbook for our time. It calls upon all of us to make radical changes for the betterment of ourselves, our planet, and--by extension--everyone. (Summary from WorldCat)

Table of Contents:

Preface
Dr. Psyche Williams-Forson

Introduction: The Birth of the Sistah Vegan Project
A. Breeze Harper

1. Thinking and Eating at the Same Time: Reflections of a Sistah Vegan
Michelle R. Loyd-Paige

2. Veganism and Ecowomanism
Layli Phillips

3. Social Justice Beliefs and Addiction to Uncompassionate Consumption: Food for Thought
A. Breeze Harper

4. On Being Black and Vegan
Delicia Dunham

5. Nutrition Liberation: Plant-based Diets as a Tool for Healing, Resistance, and Self-Reliance
Melissa Danielle

6. Young, Black, and Vegan
Joi Marie Probus

7. Veganism: Stepping Away from the Status Quo
Venus Taylor

8. Being a Sistah at PETA
Ain Drew

9. Hospital-Sponsored Junk Food at a "Healthy" Bike-Riding Event?
Robin Lee

10. Black-a-tarian
Ma'at Sincere Earth

11. Identity, Freedom, and Veganism
Melissa Santosa

12. Terror Tara
Sophia Bahna-James

13. Eyes of the Dead
Mary Spears

14. I Am Sistah Vegan
Tasha Edwards

15. Gourmet Chef at McD's
Olu Butterfly Woods

16. To Eat or Not to Eat
Thea Moore

17. Stop Feeding Me Your Bullsh*t
Tishana Joy Trainor

18. "What You Cooking, Grandma?"
Nia Yaa

19. The Food and Sex Link
Angelique Shofar

20. Journey to Veganism
Ajowa Nzinga Ifateyo

21. The Fulfillment of the Movement
Adama Maweja

22. Ma'at Diet
Iya Raet

23. Because They Matter
Tashee Meadows

24. Journey Toward Compassionate Choice: Integrating Vegan and Sistah Experience
Tara Sophia Bahna-James

25. Veganism and Misconceptions of Thinness as "Normal" and "Healthy": Sistah Vegans Break It Down in Cyberspace
A. Breeze Harper

Afterword: Liberation as Connection and the Decolonization of Desire
Pattrice Jones

Topics: Environment, Feminisms, Gender, Women, Health, Race Regions: Americas, North America

Year: 2010