Live from Minneapolis
“I don’t care what they think about me. I just want them to go vegan.”
That’s what Karen Dawn said to me after I remarked that I hoped her new book would lead people in the animal advocacy movement to give her more credit as an thinker.
Karen is one of a number of women in the movement (Isa comes to mind) who are always saying smart new ideas but who are not taken as seriously as thinkers as men who style themselves as intellectuals. As a woman who is taken seriously, I’ve noticed that gender (masculinity or femininity) often determines a woman’s credibility. (In a theory class in my first year of graduate school, the professor only called on and knew the names of all of the male students, plus me. The “plus me” kept us all from noticing his rather overt sexism until I realized that he was coding me as male and started raising my hand and then ceding the floor to other women.)
Karen really doesn’t care whether you think she’s smart but really does say smart things all the time. (Her chapter in Terrorists or Freedom Fighters is an excellent model of thinking something through and changing your mind.) This time, she’s applied her smarts to the question of how to write a truly accessible animal rights book pitched to people under thirty. A book that you could give as a gift and which would actually be received as a gift (rather than a duty) by a non-vegan recipient. She’s done it, I think. Thanking the Monkey: Rethinking the Way We Treat Animals is the kind of book that people will be happy to pick up. Library Journal calls it “Sensitive and informative… humor throughout… A riveting text you’ll be sure to want to read.” The question is: Will people change their ways after reading it? The only way to find out is to buy it for someone you know. I strongly recommend that you do.
I’m writing this live from the Their Lives, Our Voices conference in Minneapolis, which was organized as a MidWestern alternative to the national animal rights conferences that are always convened on the coasts. Tomorrow I get to talk about things that nobody wants to hear about. I also get to moderate a discussion on dealing with stress and grief. So, I’m taking it easy today, staffing the Lantern Books table and dreaming of the days when I used to work at a feminist bookstore. Monday I’ll be visiting a friend in prison.
More later, maybe.
June 8th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
Hey — I will indeed read this book — and for your own records, I never received this blog entry — perhaps there was another problem with Word Press?
Charlotte