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

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In this lively, accessible, and provocative collection, Aph and Syl Ko provide new theoretical frameworks on race, advocacy for nonhuman animals, and feminism. Ko believes that " Racism uses animality as a vehicle to oppress any being that is not considered ‘human. Enjoy” may be an unexpected word choice for a series of essays meant to challenge thought on issues of humanity connected to animality in the context of race, but I’m one of those people who loves for my ideas to be thoughtfully challenged. A fascinating examination of how racism and animal rights are intertwined even while most people who work in both philosophical areas intentionally try to keep the two ideas separate.

So, our ability to fight the system of white supremacy lies in our ability to counteract this narrative and live outside of this value system that places "humans" at the top and animals on the bottom. The authors mention how it came out during the Rodney King trial that Los Angeles public officials in the justice system routinely used the acronym N. They explain in accessible ways that help you to expand your mind to the new possibilities of true liberation (a liberation that is necessarily intertwined for all the oppressed from the beginning). In Aph’s author’s note at the start of the book she emphasises that they’re not telling you what you should think.I whole-heartedly recommend this book and eagerly anticipate more of these women's ever-changing and critical insight. Society has recently agreed for the most part to care about black people when they die (at least we are outraged and upset for the cases that grace our newspapers) but does it care about them when they live. I have personally seen this extensively in discussions on gender over the years, where instead of a willingness to discuss viewpoints, the premise of structural inequality—rather than targeted inequality—is dismissed at its core. For vegans or minority activists, this book should challenge, or at least provide some expanded ideas, on your views. Let's use our erasure from this rotten-to-the-core Western notion of humanity to build up a different “new world,” one that is not defined in terms of dichotomies or hierarchies or emotional death—but centered on love: one in which we accept ambiguity and difference, grounded in an expansive, limitless “we.

Aphro-ism was a digital space dedicated to critical thinking, intellectual conversations, and probing essays centering on decolonial feminism, veganism, animals, and anti-racism.In 2019 PETA said through the site Ko "has arguably done more to give black vegans a voice than any other media outlet today. It deconstructs Eurocentric views (aka white supremacy + colonialism) in relationship to its founding roots in animality.