Book Review: APHRO-ISM Essays on Pop Culture, Feminism, and Black Veganism from Two Sisters by Aph Ko and Syl Ko

[Image: The cover of Aphro-ism is a brown-gold background with three vertically aligned geometric symbols leading down to the heads of Aph and Syl Ko. Aph and Syl are shown from the side, shoulder to shoulder, and facing opposite directions towards the left and right of the image. They are each dressed in bright, multi-colored astronaut uniforms and the images have a watercolor paint effect filter. Below them is a purple bar with the book's title in pink and white letters.]

Also available on my goodreads.

I have been reading the writings of Aph and Syl Ko since the beginnings of APHRO-ISM and Black Vegans Rock as blog sites. Back then it was already very exciting to see people coming out with ideas that were not only tackling topics at the root of huge fighting and divisions between vegan, animal lib, and social justice communities, but doing so in fresh new ways. Aph and Syl both have brilliant minds and ways of combining their powers together through conversation then reproducing them beautifully on the screen (and now page.) When they put the word out about their book, a lot of us were extremely excited. Many of us have been learning from their wisdom and/or feeling validated by their work.

The essays in APHRO-ISM explore critical theory in ways I find somewhat more accessible than a lot of critical theory out there. Many of the arguments made against academia and critical theory include the reality that some people are trying to tangibly survive while academics sit writing think pieces. But, what Aph and Syl do in this book is show the importance of thinking through things to liberation. There is a call for the defense of thought and culture- of "Black LIFE" not just Black lives and bodies.

Many of the essays are speaking directly to Black people- both vegan and nonvegan. This stays with the consistent theme of the need to decenter whiteness in movements for justice and liberation. Many arguments are well made that white supremacy teaches Black and other people of color to spend most of their time calling out and educating white people rather than decentering them and creating futures without them. The book does a good job creating this literary space in practice. I had the honor of seeing Aph give a presentation similar to the last writing in the book, "Creating New Conceptual Architechture: On Afrofuturism, Animality, and Unlearning/Rewriting Ourselves" at a conference and was incredibly motivated and moved by it. There Aph uses models of the solar system to construct a model of a reality we are not seeing: that the "social solar system" does not revolve around white folks or the most privileged of society, even if it appears that way, just as everything appeared to be orbiting the Earth upon early observation of the night sky. The reality is that the marginalized and oppressed- those seen as subhuman- are the Sun at the center of the solar system, and without them, the most privileged could not survive or exist.

Aph and Syl also focus in multiple ways on how animality is used to oppress people. Even though humans belong biologically to the kingdom Animalia with other animals, and even though marginalized and oppressed human beings are biologically homo sapiens along with ruling class white abled cis male humans, oppressed humans and animals all are forced into a space of "subhuman" that is created by white supremacist patriarchy. As Syl states, "The human-animal divide is the ideological bedrock underlying the framework of white supremacy. The negative notion of 'the animal' is the anchor of this system." As a result, animality must be reclaimed and factored into our analyses of oppression. This is a genius argument that is made well throughout several essays in the book.

The book is not limited to topics of Black veganism or animality and also goes into discussions of social media, tactics in activism and critical thinking, and others. It is at the forefront of new and needed systems of thinking, moving on from intersectionality as a technique to afrofuturism as a practice and model for the future. APHRO-ISM is a satellite that helps us see who is really at the center of our social solar system. Highly recommended.