Book Review: Multispecies Assemblies

image: the cover of the book has cream and teal stripes going across the top and bottom. On top in black is the title and on the bottom is eva Meijer's name. In the center is an illustration of a tropical scene with palm trees and a mountain in the distance. I'm the center an elephant drinks from a pond wherein fish swim. There are many rabbits lounging around or hanging out across the ground in the rest of the image.

I've long been a big fan of Eva Meijer's work. Her books about animal language and communication are some of my favorite in terms of scholarship regarding the lives of other animals. As a result, I was excited to see this book coming out, especially from the independent press of VINE sanctuary. 

Multispecies Assemblies is an act of both practicality and imagination. It involves thinking far outside of the box about how we can have participatory relationships with the rest of the natural world. Well this book went a little too far outside certain boxes for me at times, I still found the exercise itself to be brilliant. One of my biggest issues with animal liberation action and philosophy is that humans are often making decisions without truly thinking about what other animals want and experience. We tend to make decisions on how we feel about what we know. Even in many animal advocacy scenarios, there is a power dynamic that attracts people that do more harm than good at times. This is of course not unique to animal advocacy. Any sort of anti-authoritarian structure can attract those willing to exploit it. In the case of other than human animals, many on both sides of the divide will take advantage of the fact that the animals are not able to have a seat at the table.

In this book, Meijer asks us to imagine what it would be like if other beings did have a seat at the table. She offers strategies and many examples of what that may look like. The book is grounded enough that it is clear she is not saying we should have a round table discussion with fishes and trees anytime a decision needs to be made, as if that were possible. Rather, she takes steps to find ways to include others so that they cannot be forgotten in the conversation. 

There are many examples where the author discusses how to make sure everything from a river to a bird can be included as much as possible in the decision making about their lives. She discusses how human representation will of course be necessary in these conversations. Yet, she also make sure to offer ways that we can best step aside and decenter ourselves.

One thing she mentions having learned from VINE Sanctuary is that humans making decisions should be in proximity to those who they are making decisions for. For instance, if decisions need to be made about what will happen to a wetland area, the discussion should be had while that area is in view. Decisions about an animals life should involve proximity to that animal. As long as oppression is out of sight it is much easier to excuse it. People forced to stand in a slaughterhouse would have a much harder time defending what is going on there, then if they were simply in an aisle at the grocery store. It is easier to defend our fast fashion purchases at a discount rack than it would be while standing in the middle of a sweatshop. 

Where this book didn't fully work for me is how the author at times seemed to streamline the abilities and experience other species a bit too much. She seems to discuss plants and other parts of nature as having "cognition" and communication similar to animals. This is something that I found a bit frustrating. Meijer quotes from Braiding Sweetgrass (wherein the author asks trees for permission to kill them, but didn't mention this with animals, I assume because most animals tend to give a pretty emphatic and undeniable "no.") Plants also propagate from being killed and eaten among other things which would make suffering and pain completely incompatible evolutionary flaws common across far too many species for it to be a leftover maladaptive mutation. Plants are not communicating and having experiences of suffering like we animals do. We can discuss the importance of the natural world without needing to make them like us. Furthermore, this goes against the book's thesis as this is an anthropocentric action. 

The elevation of plants and other natural structures to a false similarity with ourselves can also backfire. It can cause people open to the idea of considering other animals languages and experiences to distrust the author due to incorrect information and misuse of terms like cognition regarding plants. It can also give ammunition to the dishonest strawmanning that anti-animal sentiment brings up where people claim that plants have feelings and thus farming/exploiting animals is the same. Aside from the fact that it takes exponentially more plants in order to farm animals, nobody truly believes that stepping on grass is the same as kicking a puppy. 

The other thing I found missing at times from this, which may be due to the limitations of the length of the essay, is the reality that these assemblies there will undoubtedly result in disagreements rooted in the way the natural world is as a whole. A balanced ecosystem has a wide range of creatures including animals that prey upon other animals. I am sure that a hawk has a different view than the vole on how things should go. Think of the debate around feral cats and the ecosystem imbalance that occurs as a result of humans introducing them.

I think that Meijer's scholarship regarding animal languages would have made this an extremely interesting direction to go in. I would like to hear an expansion of how to resolve conflicts about wounds that occur throughout nature that involve suffering but are simultaneously necessary/unavoidable. Without addressing this, the book can come off as a little naive, which has not been my experience with Meijer's other work.

I have said before that I often have the biggest, most detailed criticisms of authors that I like the most. I suppose I'm holding Meijer to a higher standard here than I would another precisely because I admire her work so much. The existence of this book in and of itself is quite a feat. Even trying to tackle the idea of having a cooperative interaction that goes beyond multiple species is the kind of progressive thinking I think we need in this world. These are the kind of discussions we need to be having. So, my criticisms are attempts to join the conversation, not silence it. I recommend this book wholeheartedly and I hope it starts a great many conversations and how we can resolve conflicts. Decentering the human is more important than ever in a dying world. 

This was also posted to my goodreads and storygraph.  

Book Review: A Continuous Struggle

Image: The cover of the book is a cream background with a photo of Martin Sostre broken up into several squares divided by thin lines. Sostre is bald, with medium brown skin and a very short beard. Across the top in black is "a continuous struggle," below that in red is "the revolutionary life of Martni Sostre." Across the bottom is the author's name Garret Felber and "Foreword by Robin D.G. Kelley."

Anarchism in modern day USA sometimes has a false reputation of being a bunch of young privileged white people breaking windows for no reason. Much of this is due to media and government smear campaigns among other things, but part of it also lies at the feet of our own communities where anarchists who are often centered are white, etc. Not to go all #notallwhitepeople or whatever, but there are some truly amazing anarchists throughout history who were/are white. I am not here saying they shouldn't be studied and admired. I am saying that folks are missing out on a much bigger tent of anarchism, including Black anarchism. One of the most passionate and often unknown anarchist organizers is Martin Sostre. It is very tough to find anything comprehensive out there about him for a variety of reasons I will detail later. When I saw that a biography about Sostre was being released, I was super excited to learn more about him and his life. 

A Continuous Struggle: The Revolutionary Life of Martin Sostre is a labor of love by Garrett Felber. He begins the book humbly, expressing his concern that he may not be able to do this story justice, but being willing to try his best anyway. He also mentions that there were mixed feelings about whether or not Sostre would have wanted a biography as even his death was kept private when he passed. I think that Felber executed this biography well. There is an extensive and impressive level of research into history and materials that are not easily accessible. Much of Sostre's writing was in the form of letters or small pamphlets rather than books and better archived things of the past. I also think that Felber did well to center the revolutionary aspect of Sostre's existence, as Felber and Sostre's family guessed he would have preferred. Felber did this without sacrificing honesty, though, and did well to tell the story of Sostre as a human being rather than a flawless leader.

The life and history of Martin Sostre is essentially also a history of USAmerican prison industrial complex and civil rights movements for both Black and Puerto Rican communities at large. One cannot understand Sostre without also understanding these histories. I believe that Felber did well to set the stage for things that were going on at the time, including giving mini bios of the various organizers that worked with Sostre. Sostre spent so much of his time incarcerated, that much of his organizing took place behind bars. It was frankly quite intense reading about what he went through. In early life, he was incarcerated for drug offenses that he did admit to. However, moving on, changing, and creating community and liberatory structures landed him in the sights of the state, who then framed him (now documented and admitted to by the officers involved) in order to put him back in prison. He endured torture regularly, but remained so defiant throughout it all. I honestly don't understand how someone could have kept going, even with the supports he had and how incredibly strong his beliefs in the struggle were.

Sostre truly exemplified the "propaganda of the deed" style of organizing. While he did write and make speeches, which are unfortunately often lost to time, his real focus was in taking action and building community. Outside prison (or in part from within via help from his support system,) Sostre created revolutionary spaces that worked as book stores, libraries, community gathering areas, and so on. Dealing with everything from closures and fire bombs from the state, he kept going through it all. He also was involved in organizing for prisoners, despite the absolute brick walls built up around him. In prison, he resisted oppression every chance he got, even from solitary confinement, including the fighting the regular sexual assault of invasive bodily searches and the beatings that ensued. There was a lot of interesting history in this book about Muslim organizing in prison which led to many religious freedoms we see as more common today, however flawed. Sostre had an amazing support system outside composed of stellar and unrelenting organizers. However, even they could only do so much in the face of state repression. I found myself regularly thinking about what it was like for prisoners- political and non- who didn't have any support. Once he was finally out of prison for good later in life, Sostre continued the practice of radical bookstore/infoshop creation and also took up organizing around housing and education in his communities. Essentially, Sostre was known far more for what he did than what he said.

Sostre's journey towards identifying as anarchist was also interesting to read about. Like many, he initially saw anarchism as a white thing, but later realized it as a larger struggle. He discovered time and again that authoritarianism from state structures to the Nation of Islam were flawed at the center. To read about someone going from a corrupt military cop in his late teens (a story too long for a review) to black nationalist-adjacent/Muslim marxist-leninist to a prolific anarchist organizer added a level of hope to my worldview (and also forgiveness of my younger imperfect self.) Sostre went on to influence other Black anarchists such as Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin who met Sostre in prison and was inspired by his guidance. The story is far more complex and interesting than I have detailed in this paragraph, so I highly recommend the book before seeing this as the whole picture.

In the end, I do think Felber was successful in this monumental task of telling the complex story of someone's life taking place in a complex time and in complex institutions. I like to hope that if Sostre were alive today, he would appreciate the way his story was told. This book is a necessary addition to the bookshelves of anyone interested in history as well as any anarchist or leftist thinkers. It expands upon not only general assumptions about what anarchism is but also about the various belief systems and activities taking place during the civil rights movements at the time all well telling the story of Martin Sostre, who kept fighting until the very end.

This was also posted to my goodreads and storygraph.

Book Review: The Birding Dictionary

Image: the cover of the book is yellow with blue binding and black writing. There is a red bird with brown wings sitting on a pair of binoculars in the lower right corner. Across the top is a quote from Ed Yong which reads "a laugh out loud funny guide to the ludicrously amazing and amazingly ludicrous world of birds and birders." Below that is the title The Birding dictionary. Below that is a pseudo definition reading "1. (Noun) a tongue-in-cheek guide for people who find themselves obsessed, against all logic and reason, with birds." In the bottom left corner it says written and illustrated by Rosemary Mosco.

I have been a long time fan of Rosemary Mosco. Her comic Bird and Moon brings joy and levity to life in general, but also to the birding world specifically. It's strange to say this, because I initially got into birding as something that relaxes me: Birding can be kind of intense sometimes. There is a seriousness to it, especially if you are contributing to citizen science projects. This can sometimes lead to forgetting just how much we are in it for the birds and our love of them. Being a lister and doing remote bird surveys can sometimes end up frustrating and I become desperate for something to kick me back into the space where it all started. The Birding Dictionary brings that whimsical humor that comes with any niche community willing to poke fun at itself. 

The author had me from the very start with an introduction page penned as a fantastical but realistic overly serious birder. I laughed out loud immediately. Every page that followed brought lightness to my days in these extra dark times we're living in. The dictionary aspect is an intentional design, but this is a brief cover to cover read full of jokes, fun facts, illustrations, and actual definitions- some of which were for terms I had not heard of before. Essentially, laugh AND learn.

This book would be great for any birder. I could see someone just starting out enjoying it as well as an expert with decades of experience under their belt. Hell, there's even a quote on the back from Sibley praising the book. You don't get a more famous niche recommendation than that and the birding world. I honestly wish I had more birders as closer friends, because I want to gift everyone a copy.

This book was truly an antidote for me. In both personal life and in relation to the larger world, things are pretty depressing. Even engaging in birding has been tough as a result. Looking forward to picking this book up each time and knowing I would smile was a simple pleasure I didn't realize I needed. This whimsical little book ended up being far more important to me than I realized it would be. 

So, if you are into birds or honestly anything adjacent to birding like the larger natural sciences, this book is for you. I really enjoyed it and will likely come back to it regularly just to get a little taste of the happiness it brought me.

This was also posted to my goodreads and storygraph.

Book Review: Transmentation Transience

image: the cover of the book is a swirling rendition of different landscapes spiraling towards the center. One includes a city skyline, another a desert, another an ocean, whales swim in the upper right corner. Across the center in large white letters is "Transmentation Transience" and across the bottom in amber is Darkly Lem. 

 Transmentation Transience is a creative project composed by a group of authors writing together under the name Darkly Lem. They describe themselves as "five authors in an impeccably-tailored trenchcoat, namely Josh Eure, Craig Lincoln, Ben Murphy, Cadwell Turnbull, and M. Darusha Wehm." I came into contact with this book due to being a fan of Turnbull, so it was interesting to see what a collaborative piece would turn out to be. I honestly didn't know what to expect. I have read books where two authors are writing under one name, but cannot recall reading a book where 5 authors were. Somehow, in ways I don't fully understand, they made it work. 

TT is a book about many worlds. Central to the stories are people who hop from one universe to another, finding themselves in a new body, retaining their own mind and personality, but still being changed by who they end up inhabiting. It is not fully clear how this works or what exactly it entails. This is probably a show don't tell choice, but I hope more explanation comes in future books. There are various groups existing in various universes, many of which have conflicts with one another. Thankfully, the authors give us a character list in the very beginning telling us which locality various characters are located in. As someone with a horrendous memory, I often have to take notes when reading books with tons of characters, especially when those characters are sometimes turning into other characters in another universes. I was very grateful to see this list when I opened the book. 

The writing in TT is cohesive. I am not sure if each author wrote a different section containing each story about characters existing in each locality. There are definite distinctions between each section that would benefit from such an approach. But, stylistically it still fits together for the most part. I would say the last quarter of the book feels a bit disjointed. That is also because there are a couple twists that occur that are not well explained. 

I'm being deliberately vague to avoid spoilers. Overall, despite all of these different universes, characters, and names, I found the book fairly easy to follow. There are some things that are just personal taste that weren't my favorite. I would say this book is what some call science fantasy more than science fiction. The way some of the worlds and the characters and beings within them are designed doesn't feel quite right to me. There are also a couple of events that occur in the last quarter that we're not introduced as fluidly as they could be. I ended up going back and rereading certain sections thinking I missed something. I had not. The characters themselves though all felt quite real to me. I especially enjoyed sections with long conversations. It's interesting that a story with so much extravagant inter-universal travel and wild action scenes enthralled me most when it was just two people discussing their experiences. 

The book is definitely designed to be part of a larger series- listed as the first book in "The Formation Saga." At over 400 pages, (in my ARC at least,) the conclusion leaves you with prompts for the story to continue, rather than a bunch of concrete resolutions. This was such an interesting approach to writing that I hope the series is given the green light to continue by the publisher and not abandoned like some of these projects are. I enjoyed a glimpse into these universes and was left curious about what comes next for these characters. I do hope that when a new book is written, they will offer a decent recap of things that happened in this one for other memory-deficient people like myself. 

This was also posted to my goodreads and storygraph. 

Book Review: Birds at Rest

Image: the cover of the book is a scene of three flamingoes resting on water. Each light pink bird is standing on one long leg and resting their long neck and head inside their wing. Across the center in white is "birds at rest." Before that in pink is "the behavior and ecology of avian sleep." In the bottom right corner is the author name Roger F. Pasquier.

Roger F. Pasquier's Birds at Rest: The Behavior and Ecology of Avian Sleep is a necessary addition to more common types of references and guides regarding birds and their behavior. Despite having shelves full of them and reading up on various things about bird behavior, there is very little out there like this book that details such a massive part of their lives- resting, roosting, sleeping, and all of the related behaviors that come with that.

The information in this book is exhaustive in a good way. While there was more captive animal research than I prefer to read about, that was to be expected going into this book and is not a mark against it. The author is not in charge of the ethics of those research studies. There is a ton of informative and more ethical field research, much of which I had never encountered anything close to before. I learned a lot of different things about species that I tend to focus my interest on, as well as many things about species I've never even heard of. I also learned about field research methods that were quite interesting. I had no idea there were mobile EEG methods where one could study the sleep of chimney swifts in flight for instance. I found a lot of this extremely fascinating. 

The book also covers what human intervention into the environment has done to the abilities referred to roost safely, communicate and breed effectively, and generally exist in the world. This was unsurprisingly the saddest part of the book. For instance I knew that our light pollution had affected migration and bird behavior for some time. I didn't realize, even though perhaps I should have, that it also damages their ability to breed successfully. A critical factor for consideration regarding the decline in bird populations is simply artificial light. Our introduction of non-native species has caused extinction and decline in large numbers. Our destruction of habitat causes birds to compete more than they would normally, resulting in further aggression and conflict. This was another thing that is unsurprising, but written in a way that I had not quite thought about it before. Humans tend to write about birds as fighting over territory and competing through various means as if it is a given. But we don't tend to write enough about how the sheer amount of competition is so directly affected by our destruction of their habitats for any number of reasons. I wonder how different aggression levels were before we decimated most of the planet.

 I will admit that I did find this book a bit dry at times. It very much reads cover to cover like a reference guide without photography. There are illustrations that I found quite charming and whimsical. There's almost a children's book quality to some of them which did break things up a bit. But, there weren't enough of them for my tastes when it comes to reading a book straight through like this. At the same time, it is very well organized such that one could treat it exactly like a guide. Each chapter is well labeled and constructed and contains a detailed summary at the end. So, if you find yourself overwhelmed by reading the catalogue of facts about each and every bird species, you could successfully read the summary of each chapter and then go through to seek out the more specific information that you need. Strangely though, there was no summary at the end of the book. It just ended abruptly after that last section on human influence. So, perhaps I went into this book expecting something different, but it is likely best to treat it as a reference guide. 

One may retain more information by hopping around the book rather than reading it cover to cover. Nonetheless it's full of page flags and I'll definitely be coming back to it time and again. I'm grateful to have a volume on my shelf containing such important information that is often so lacking and scholarship about the avian world.

This was also posted to my goodreads and storygraph.

Book Review: Love in a F*cked Up World

Image: the cover of the book is a bright yellow background with LOVE in large red letters and in a fucked up world in smaller ones. Below that in pink is "how to build relationships, hook up, and raise hell together." Below that in red is Dean Spade and again in pink, "author of mutual aid."

I have immense respect for Dean Spade's work. I especially like how he has branched out from academia further than many people do, creating highly accessible and urgent texts like Mutual Aid and now, Love in a F*cked Up World. I understand why the cover design is the way it is- to grab the attention of a wide audience. But, it made me think that it might not be for me. (Also, I just hate yellow for reasons I can't articulate.) Despite having chosen not to seek out romantic or sexual relationships many years ago, I figured why not give this a go even if it didn't apply to my current situation. Don't let the cover fool you into thinking this is another romantic relationship advice book. Spade even anticipates the hesitation some folks, especially radicals, may have. He urges the reader to remain open minded to a self help book being more than an "...individualistic... liberal, bougie... distraction from collective action." This book takes all the good little nuggets from various self help and communication books, sorts out all of the garbage, and then translates it all into something very wise and healing. 

Even as someone who doesn't have intentions in the near future to date, I desperately needed this book for all other relationships in my life. Even moreso, I needed this book years (decades?) ago when mired in polyamorous organizing and kink communities. I needed it so much that I had to grieve a bit while reading for my former, ignorant self and anyone around me. 

Even on a good day, I'm someone who craves categories, boxes, clear lines, and knowing exactly how to quantify the harm I've caused, could cause, and to predict that which will come to me in any situation. My mental health tends to make this far worse than the average person, essentially leading to isolation. I judge situations, myself, and sometimes others harshly in order to avoid further trauma and out of fear that I will cause it. This book gave me permission to let go of that. It was an exercise in self awareness and understanding of others while telling me that it's ok to find the grey area.

I won't pretend I'm cured of OCD/PTSD in 326 pages of reading, but this book ended up being a really good complement to my exposure therapy exercises, especially socially. Spade manages to write a relationship book that centers radicals, queers, leftists, etc rather than simply including us in the margins as other relationship books do (if they do at all.) As a result, anti-aurhoritarianism ends up being centered, leading to a final product that is a book many of us have been waiting for and needing our entire lives.

I recall that when Sarah Schulman's Conflict is not Abuse came out, many of us were able to ignore some of the flaws because it was a drink of water in the desert. Our communities, much like the larger world, are punishing and full of human beings with diverse needs and backgrounds. Spade urges the reader early on not to filter the book through dominant pop psychology trends in an attempt to ostracize and isolate others. (Lookin at all of the people who call every disagreement "gaslighting narcissism" and whatnot.) Instead, he offers tons of relatable anecdotes (including those from his own life) showing the normal conflicts that occur in many kinds of relationships. These conflicts can be so charged, stressful, and hurtful, that we may jump to what we've learned from larger cultures as solutions- even when it goes against our values. Movements are fractured, healing is impossible, and the whole thing can become a downward spiral taking the connections we desperately need with it. Spade urges us to better understand ourselves and others to better align our relationships with our values. 

Like Mutual Aid, LIAFUW is highly readable, accessible, and well organized. I think that perhaps the centering of our communities might take a second for someone outside them to get used to, but not so much so as to be a barrier. I like to hope it will be enlightening, pulling the well intentioned (USAmerican, essentially center right wing) liberal further away from oppression and closer to what they're actually craving. 

The best part of this book is the insistence on the importance of differentiation, interdependence, and creating relationships outside of romantic ones. While many exercises and anecdotes do involve romantic conflicts, since we often tend to be our worst selves in those, the sections on friendship and other relationships are refreshing and critical. One of the main reasons I stopped dating was that I realized I had very few nonsexual friendships and had not been single more than maybe 6 months since I was 13. Friendships, in my opinion-especially in adulthood- are harder to create and nurture than romance in a society that prioritizes the latter as the most important thing. Spade does well to show how nourishing friendships is not only important in and of itself, but it also results in all other relationships being healthier.

The only thing I wanted from this book was a little more advice on how to tell when something is actually abuse. There is a small section in the beginning that discusses this difficulty and I do understand why this is outside the scope of this book. I just found myself wondering in some sections, "but what if this behavior is controlling beyond normal conflict?" and "what about people who utilize the freedom in radical communities to prey upon people?" There are many books already written well about this such as Creative Interventions, Beyond Survival, and The Revolution Starts at Home. If you also find yourself wondering about that, I suggest those as complement texts. 

I highly recommend this book to anyone really, but especially to leftists and Queers who've become accustomed to relationship books- even those that are supposed to be outside dominant culture- leaving much to be desired, or worse, giving dangerous advice. I see LIAFUW becoming one of those staples on leftist bookshelves that we lend to each other with love and care. I look forward to Spade continuing to expand his writing in ways that allow for larger, stronger, and more diverse movements. 

This was also posted to my goodreads and storygraph.

Book Review: Transfarmation

Image: The cover of the book is a lime green background with large wording taking up the entire page. Across the top in brown is "transfarmation," below that in cream and yellow is "the movement to free us from factory farming," at the bottom in smaller yellow letters is the author, "Leah Garcés."

It is rare to encounter a book regarding farming or the (mis)treatment of animals that is for so many audiences at once. Transfarmation, by Leah Garcés, happens to be one of those books. Garcés is the president of Mercy for Animals. While this particular org is often quite good at bridging divides, I still expected this book to either lean towards something mostly vegans would go for (screaming to the choir in our void of despair where everyone ignores us (joking... sorta)) or one of those books that insultingly erases the most vulnerable individuals of all species involved in farming so that the reader doesn't have to feel bad (or responsible.) Transfarmation is both emotionally honest and intellectually rigorous. It is for the city dwelling vegan with a one-dimensional view of animal farming and for the rural residents whose exploitation and injury via animal agribusiness seems like an inescapable fact of life. It is for the person most moved by true stories that tug at their heartstrings and for the person who says, "show me the numbers." Possibly most importantly, it involves a plan: Tangible, attainable solutions to the current crises we find ourselves in. There is definitely a place for exposure of the absolutely heinous abuse of animal agribusiness alone. When paired with solutions though, it leaves the reader feeling less hopeless.

The writing and structure of this book is extremely well thought out. Every section has a central individual interest storyline (aka human interest, but since this includes other species I've made it more general.) It is well documented that this is the sort of story that causes most people to change their mind. You can tell people all day about the trillions of animals who die per year for food, slaughterhouse covid transmission statistics, how many farmers take their own lives, and so on. For most people though, this isn't enough to make it stick. As much as we like to pretend otherwise, we are not rational beings. To absorb the data, we need to relate to it. Garcés does this exceptionally well. 

We first focus on the farmers themselves who are manipulated by industries who profit from their work while the farmers descend further into crippling debt and despair from the actions they must take against other animals and their community to meet this capitalist need. The titular name of the book refers to the Transfarmation Project which "provides resources and support to industrial animal farmers interested in transitioning their farms to plant-focused operations." After reading this book, it is clearly about much more than that. It is about forming relationships and bridging divides. I always knew that factory farmers likely weren't evil moustache twirling animal abuse fetishists, but I also didn't realize just how much they have been manipulated to fail and how that failure is basically a central tenet of the profit model of animal exploitation corporations.

"Farmers aren't factory farming because they love the idea of being under the thumb of corporate entities and picking up dead and dying chickens. They do it because they are trapped in debt and have few other economic options."

We learn next about farmed animals by focusing on a few who make up the miniscule minority who are rescued and can have their tales told. I particularly like that she focused on a chickens and cows exploited for dairy as agribusiness industries have lobbied hard to make these seem like less horrific options (they are not.) We learn of three chickens a farmer was willing to let go of and the bits of freedom they were allowed to experience before succumbing to the inevitable demise caused by industries who breed their bodies to be their own enemies. We learn of Norma the former dairy cow who was rescued after defending her calf Nina after so many forced inseminations she had experienced previously where her calves were stolen from her within a day. This story has a happier ending where we learn that both she and her calf were rescued and reunited. I also love that Garcés chose VINE Sanctuary as the focus for one of the stories as their collective liberation models of organizing and care are revolutionary. They fit well into the aims of the book to further the conversation to include the humans most exploited by these industries.

The narrative of the book is next expanded into the larger community, where we learn about the disproportionately low income BIPOC communities who find themselves surrounded on all sides by farms imprisoning pigs that spray literal feces into the air they breathe and the homes they sleep in. We learn about the lengths they have had to go to to literally organize for the right to breathe shit-free air when the county sheriff is also a hog farmer. We learn how even the BIPOC communities who have homes to hand down over generations find those homes and neighborhoods now uninhabitable. Following this, we move on to the immigrant communities- a large number of whom are undocumented or are still awaiting citizenship approval- who work in the slaughter facilities. We learn of the heinous lengths they go to to survive their trip into the country, only to be forced into a processing plant that demands impossible speeds of killing and dismembering animals, resulting in physical injuries, severe PTSD, disease, and death. We also learn of the refugee communities who may have more support, but who find themselves placed into and therefore harmed by the same job in order to gain any benefits from their refugee status. "Processing" plants rely on the vulnerability of these workers along with prison laborers paid 25 cents an hour. This means they are also often run by men who sexually harass and assault workers, who make threats and defy the already meager legal restrictions, and so on. We learn what it is like to be a mother forced to do a job bludgeoning baby pigs. We learn of the slaughter rate of 3 chickens per second allowed by both democrat and republican legislatures, causing immense pain for the workers and resulting in the birds who are not killed fast enough drowning in scalding water. 

That summary may make it seem like a trauma dump, but I assure you that this book is not that. My already long review has its limits. We also learn of these peoples hopes, desires, and joys. We learn of the lives they could have- lives that are indeed possible with change. The book ends with a grounded and detailed section including solutions for every problem it presents which include further support for farmers to transition away from factory farming, animal welfare measures making animals lives slightly less miserable, unions and worker protection measures for those laboring in farms and slaughterhouses, and systemic economic changes. While I have not followed every single effort, I have generally found Mercy for Animals to be an org that understands how to mix welfarism with abolition (a long standing argument occurring between animal advocates.) However, I was not the biggest fan of how cage free eggs were spoken of. While she does acknowledge that the practice does not come close to eliminating suffering, she neglects the marketing aspect of these (predominantly also factory farming) companies that make well intentioned but misled people imagine chickens running around happily in the grass and dying of old age, when the reality is far more horrific. These corporations lack empathy but not cunning. They know how to market any loss to turn it into a win and we need to think of that. That said, if I was in a battery cage the size of a small closet with 7 other people and someone offered me a large, crowded, dank warehouse to die in instead, I would choose the latter.

If you will allow me a final moment for a more personal vent. The information in this book not only infuriated and hurt due to the horrifying nature of atrocity. It bothered me because I worry that, no matter how perfectly the information is presented, it won't be heard. The group I kept thinking of most throughout this book, were the non/anti-vegan leftists who use strawmen and tokenization to avoid taking a hard look at our relationships to these industries and their victims. This is likely because anti-vegan sentiment often hurts the most when it comes from a respected leftist turned reactionary, a skilled environmentalist turned agribusiness lobbyist, and so on. White, single issue vegans (like white single issue proponents of any movement) are in part to blame for the divide, and there are legitimate criticisms. But, I rarely find honest conversation. I find defensiveness and cognitive dissonance. It reminds me of the Rob Zombie quote, "Everyone "loves" animals until they hear the word 'vegan'. Then they'll argue tooth and nail why it's acceptable to abuse them." I would love to see non/anti-vegan leftists read this book. I want to hear what they have to say about farmworkers picking vegans' plants (who they only bring up when veganism is a topic despite most farmland going to animal agribusiness and feed,) after they read about the struggle of slaughterhouse workers (who they of course never mention.) I want to hear from the upper middle class white person who tokenizes BIPOC communities in these discussions (while simultaneously erasing them) explain to me why spraying pig feces on their homes for bacon is helping. I also want the vegetarians and the "humane" slaughter proponents to pay attention- not the ones who are just doing the best they can, but the "not like the other girls" subset who are hostile to animal rights and veganism. I want them to understand the cost of dairy and eggs and how it is often higher than the meat they abstain from for ethical reasons. I want them to read about what happens to these animals and the humans forced into hell with them.

I say this as someone who almost 19 years ago was a non-vegan. Most of us were not born with perfected leftist ideals making us immune to the world influence we grew up in. Many of us, including recovering teen edgelords like myself, were first hostile to the idea of animal liberation or criticism of various related systems. This vent isn't meant as a superiority thing. It's meant to lay bare that many of the arguments my usually otherwise like minded kin make against animal liberation and veganism are awful and self-contradictory. They are almost always a hard turn to the far right or doing the work of capitalism via tokenization. They are often bad faith and even recreate the oppression dynamics that we claim to be against. This hurts not just because the arguments are harmful, but because I don't think they believe them in their hearts. There is room for more. There is room for a better world for all of us.

Please read this book. Read it even if you think you and I have nothing in common. You may find that we do. I hope this book helps others create the kinds of relationships and successful transitions that the author and her fellow organizers have created. Despite how tough it was at times, it gave me more hope than I have had in a while.

This was also posted to my goodreads and storygraph.

Book Review: Family Abolition

Image: The cover of the book is a gradient of pink at the top fading down into purple and then blue at the bottom. In large letters stretching the entire page, dark over the lighter parts of the background and light over day, is "family abolition - capitalism and the communizing of care" and at the bottom, "M.E. O'Brien"

Anyone who has followed my reviews likely knows by now that I have mixed feelings about academic texts, especially queer theory and the like. I often find them to be deliberately inaccessible, often discussing communities with the least access to the kind of vocabulary one needs to understand a single sentence. Sometimes a book comes along that straddles the line between academia and accessibility quite well. I found Family Abolition: Capitalism and the Communizing of Care by M. E. O'Brien to be one such text. The book will be rewarding to academics or others who frequently immerse themselves in nonfiction reading while also being readable both stylistically and regarding vocabulary. Someone unfamiliar might need to google here and there, but overall, the book emphasizes the arguments therein rather than the biggest most obscure words that can be used to make those arguments. This book challenged the way I thought about some things, validated others in ways I did not realize I needed, and offers a great deal of imaginative praxis in terms of reaching the goals set out by the author. The book is also very well organized.

This review is years after the publication date because this book and I got off to a rough start. My attempts at the PDF ARC version (I usually get hard copies or ebooks) made reading too impossible and I abandoned it for a while. I am glad I was able to return to it in another format later as it is one of the better and more original nonfiction texts that I have read.

I am actually quite estranged from most of my blood relatives, though that is something I am working on changing at the moment. Still, I did have a slight knee jerk reaction to this subject that many people may have. The Family is something woven deeply across cultures and holds great power almost everywhere in its own way. One may think of abolishing such a structure as to mean taking away the very foundation many need to survive and have relationships. O'Brien acknowledges this inevitable reaction early on. She then effectively argues that abolishing the family does not involve taking away safety, security, cooperation, nurturing, etc, but rather adding them (or creating them for the first time in some situations.) O'Brien exemplifies this through an excellent and well researched history of the intersection and interplay between the Family and Capitalism as well as other forms of oppression. 

Aside from teaching me many things I did not know about this history, one thing that stood out to me most in this book was the criticism of communities. I have always sort of blamed solely myself for my isolation, yet O'Brien discusses the phenomenon of older organizers/activists/counterculture community members etc becoming isolated through age, disability, etc as a very common problem. I still believe I could have done a much better job working on relationships in my past, but it was interesting to read that there is more to it. The argument is essentially that communities fail because capitalism causes them to and the family helps capitalism in this task. When community always ends up secondary to the family, even for those without one, communities will fall apart socially, financially, distance wise, or any other number of ways. Without fighting capitalism and other oppressions including the family, things disintegrate and fall apart. Using (antiauthoritarian) Marxist and other arguments- including also criticism of Marx and others' oppressive flaws and prejudices- the author discusses how the focus needs to be on the commune rather than the community.

O'Brien offers extensive descriptions of what the commune is, why it is important, what it and its components look like, and how they could be implemented. To tackle a rehashing of said arguments would make this review far too long. I can say that I was already on board with some things and became convinced about the others that I had not been aware of yet. I hate to admit it as an anarchist, but I am terribly misanthropic and pessimistic at times. I have a difficult time believing in utopias where everyone cooperates that do not- at best- fall apart. O'Brien's discussion of both the failure of community and an all-inclusive commune, ripe with strategies for  tackling harm and conflict, felt much more realistic to me than many things I have read. I might have found a disagreement here and there, but they were far fewer than other such proposals. 

It is clear that O'Brien created a very complex but believable whole with this book. She covers the past, present, and future in honest and accurate ways. I won't pretend that I cease to be pessimistic, as that is generally my baseline. But, this book made many things I think about and desire actually seem possible. All of this is to say that Family Abolition isn't just about critiquing and dismantling "The Family." It is about creating something better and more enriching it its place- something critical texts often fail to do properly. While critiques alone definitely have their place, this one won't leave you thinking, "Well, then what? Now what?" when you reach the end. It did not surprise me to find an optimistic speculative fiction about a future commune in her repertoire when I looked into the author. Needless to say, I look forward to giving that a read as well, hoping that O'Brien is one of the few whose academic writing skills are not at odds with her fiction ones.

This was also posted to my goodreads and storygraph.

Book Review: The Gull Guide

image: the cover of the book is a grey, white, and black bird in flight with a blurred blue sky in the background. Across the top in white letters is "the gull guide: North America," and in the bottom left corner is the author "amar ayyash."

Even master birders with decades of experience will often concede that they struggle with identification of gulls. These birds are so diverse yet so similar, have so many different phases where they look drastically different, yet very similar to one another in similar cycles, and sometimes telling them apart is a matter of the edge of a single feather or something equally ridiculous. As a result I was excited to get my hands on a copy of Amar Ayyash's The Gull Guide: North America.

I myself am not a master birder. While I am not a complete amateur since I have some years of experience under my belt, I only very recently started venturing out into interactions with other people who can teach me new things outside of my own reading and studying. As a result a guide like this is exceptionally valuable. The reason this book works so well, in my opinion, is that it does not fall into the trap that some guides do and trying to simplify something complicated. The author discusses this in how some people do not want to teach the different feathers and parts of the bird so as not to confuse someone new. However, with gulls as well as some other species, being able to tell these minute differences apart is critical. Ayyash also critiques the "x winter" labeling style since it's inaccurate given the differences in molt and breeding months between species and instead uses a far more accurate "x cycle" labeling structure. 

The information as well as the many charts and labels are indeed somewhat intimidating, but I found myself completely engaged. I was not intimidated in the way one can feel like they're drowning in information that's impossible to parse. There are copious amounts of photos showing each bit of information from a different angle. All of the photos have clear descriptions that help to learn things by sight quite well. Each section on an individual species has tons of photos and many different ways of identifying and thinking about the birds. There is even a section on aberrant birds such as leucistic and melanistic gulls. 

Ayyash also offers general birding tips on when to step back and when to hyper focus. He gives examples of confusing identifications that were made in error. The only criticism I have of the book's structure is that the multitude of images in an average sized book means that it's tough to see some of the details in smaller images. But, I'm not sure this could have been created any other way because making the images large would make the book so massive and heavy as to be unusable. I'd rather have this structure than fewer images.

Approaching the material this way not only helps one see the whole bird and learn more, it gives the reader multiple ways to focus on the birds. What I mean by this is that people learn and perceive things in different ways with different traits dominating their minds. This gives enough information on each identification type to be used by each person. Because it is full of photos and the print is high quality, it is a heavier guide. Sort of like a medium-sized Bible. So, to use in the field, I imagine this guide would be better for something like a stationary birding session. However, as someone who uses both apps in the field and print guides at home, don't let this deter you. There's something about book guides in hand that aid identification in ways that are different than those on electronics, including the wonderful pages available on Cornell's website. I can't even describe what this is, I just know that there are many times that I've been stumped only to open a book that makes everything clear to me. This book is indispensable as one of those on my shelf. None of my other guides, of which I have many, managed to make it possible to more confidently identify gulls. 

I still have a lot of practicing to do. Recently a group of ring-billed gulls in multiple cycles stood in a nice little line for me. Thanks to this guide, I was able to pick out the features and cycles of each which was a great exercise with an abundant species I'm somewhat familiar with. The next time a rare bird alert goes out for a gull, I'll be much more confident in my ability to find that needle in a haystack. 

This was also posted to my goodreads and storygraph.