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

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As long as animals are oppressed, as long as 'animal' means something degrading, we will never be set free. If you aren’t familiar with these type of arguments, please understand they are not anti-male or anti-white.

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. It also includes rituals that are perceived as distanced from nature, something as simple as eating at a table instead of on the floor.Author Aph Ko, states in the opening of this book, that she and co-author, Syl Ko, intended for "Aphro-ism" to read like “an intellectual journal between two sisters” and that is exactly what it feels like.

My favorite is the concept of animality that they bring in and how it is contingent upon white supremacy, racism, and speciesism.

Aphro-ism is a revolutionary tool for holistic anti-oppression work that can benefit both grassroots activists and academic scholars. As she so eloquently demonstrates, we should not treat human beings like ‘animals’ any more than we should treat animals like ‘animals. It deconstructs Eurocentric views (aka white supremacy + colonialism) in relationship to its founding roots in animality. Understanding the 'human' and 'animal' in this more nuanced sense should spark a commitment on our community to understand the white/black and human-animal binaries as not merely bearing upon one another but deeply intertwined, with all four terms functioning to uphold the superiority of whiteness".