Interview Series #16: Ruby Roth of That's Why We Don't Eat Animals

Every once in a while, a book comes along that is just what you need to remind you of what's important.

For me, Ruby Roth's That's Why We Don't Eat Animals is that book.

My favorite memories growing up usually involved animals. Whether it was a book about a pig on a farm who wins the heart of a young girl, a film about a baby circus elephant's longing to be with his mom, or a television show about a bunch of animals and creatures who live on Sesame Street, I fell in love with animals every time I was given the chance to.

As children, we were and continue to be taught goodness, kindness, and compassion through books, films, and shows that use animals as subjects for each lesson. One of my personal favorites is The Cow That Went Oink by Bernard Most, a book that helps children to understand the importance of kindness and respect for the differences in each of us. Most's fun, creative book begs the question - why do we use animals for this purpose? And even more so - why do we eat and abuse the very animals we use to teach our children how to be good?

"Every day, we have the freedom to change our lives. In fact, when we treat animals respectfully, we practice world peace." 
~ Ruby Roth, That's Why We Don't Eat Animals

Ruby Roth

A book written for children and their families, That's Why We Don't Eat Animals is just as vital an addition to the veg-friendly library as John Robbin's The Food Revolution or Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals, because it's simple, yet profound message - that the animals of this world have as much a desire to live and love their families as we do - is enough to become a seed of change for good in the hearts of children and grown-ups alike. I've never seen a book that handles the subject of factory farming, overfishing, and the destruction of our fellow animals and planet so delicately. With her words, Ruby creates a wonderful balance of giving a spoonful of truth to kids without completely overwhelming or alienating them. In fact, Ruby's words have the ability to empower children with the knowledge to actively think about the animals that many of them eat on a daily basis.

 "Pigs need the sight, sound, and touch of one another. Sometimes they snuggle so close that it's hard to get them apart. Love is part of their nature." ~ Ruby Roth, That's Why We Don't Eat Animals

As a lover of children, I applaud Ruby for talking to young readers as equals, and it is with this respectful, generous spirit that Ruby truly captivates her audience. The gorgeously drawn illustrations are enough to stir your soul into action, and Ruby's heartfelt narrative complement them perfectly.  

There's a video about That's Why We Don't Eat Animals on Ruby's website that is a great way to learn more about this beautiful book:

And, of course, I had to learn more myself, so I interviewed Ruby about her personal journey towards veganism, as well as the process of constructing That's Why We Don't Eat Animals.

Kiss Me, I'm Vegan: What was the turning point in your life that led you to veganism? Was it one huge moment, or a collective group of small moments that changed you? 

Ruby: I used to get tonsillitis six times a year, I had panic attacks, and backaches… and I was tired of it.  During a summer job, some raw-food vegan coworkers schooled me and even though my first question was “Where do you get your protein?”,  I went vegan cold-turkey as a health experiment. Immediately, I slimmed down so my backed stopped hurting, I was calmer but slept less, and I stopped getting sick. I could feel my body running on clean fuel. It was like taking off a heavy jacket and starting to run. The more I learned, the more my choice was validated. I was always involved in politics and justice and I realized that animal consumption is inextricably linked to world-political issues: health and disease, animal cruelty, land/air/ocean pollution, environmentalism, water waste, immigration, even gender and race. So I put my money where my mouth is and I’m thrilled to have plucked myself from a chain of deplorable issues.

KMIV: What have been the greatest rewards of your vegan lifestyle? What have been the greatest challenges? 

Ruby: 
So many! Going vegan really blows your mind open. There is a clarity about health and the body, the world and about the way people function, and the earth beneath your feet that becomes so sharp. No matter how clear-thinking I thought I was before, going vegan really changed my mind and life for the better. Plus, I’m eating superfoods like cacao, maca, kale, reishi, things I don’t know how I lived without. 

The only real challenge, as I continue to learn and study, is being faced with the reality of what’s going on with peoples’ health, with animals, and the environment. It weighs unbearably heavy. But the reward and the challenges of veganism are the flip sides of the same coin. Both lead to activism, and when you’re awake and active, nothing can get you down for long.

KMIV: I read on the website that you were teaching art in an after-school program when you were inspired to write That's Why We Don't Eat Animals. Can you tell me more about that?


Ruby: Yes, I was teaching art to kids. During their recess, they were served milk and string cheese snacks and once when they noticed I never ate with them, they wanted details. I answered every question truthfully in a nonchalant, kid-friendly way. I was shocked by their sincere interest, and many of them said they would go vegan. But there was no support system for them at home or at school, so I looked into finding a kids book to share with them. I couldn’t find one that wasn’t sugarcoated, or based on a talking animal or vegetable, which I felt they were too smart for. In the end, my students inspired me to create the book myself. 

KMIV: What do you hope children and families will take away from the book?


 Ruby: The book is meant to inspire a sense of connectedness to the world around us. And I seriously do not mean this in a hippie, kumbaya way. And kids get that. What I mean is for adults and children to live fully awake and aware that what we do every day matters - for our health, for animals, and for the planet. This idea inspires self-empowerment and a practice of wise choices, and it lasts a lifetime. 

KMIV: What advice would you give someone who is interested in veganism, but afraid of taking the leap?

Ruby: The more you add fresh, nutrient-dense foods to your regime, particularly superfoods, the less room you have (psychologically and physically) for meat and dairy, which in comparison are rather poor sources of nutrition. As your body sheds mucous and toxins and adjusts to absorbing minerals, you’ll naturally start craving the foods that deliver them best, and most likely, leave the others behind. 

KMIV: Okay -  you're stuck on a deserted island with three vegan food items -  what are they?

Ruby: Sounds like a good time! This is no contest: Kale, Raw Cacao, Avocados.
  
Kudos to Ruby Roth for sharing her book and story with the KMIV family. To learn more - or to purchase a copy of the book, visit www.wedonteatanimals.com.

A SPECIAL OPPORTUNITY FOR KMIV READERS:

10% of any art print order from www.WeDontEatAnimals.com through Aug 27th will be donated to to Animal Acres Farm Sanctuary in California! Just write KISSMYVEGAN in the special instructions box on the last page of checkout.

Hope For The Animals.

Last week for the hector giveaway, I posed the question:
 

What is your hope for the animals of this Earth? 

As per usual with your giveaway responses, I was simply not prepared for how beautifully you would all answer this. I am beyond thankful to be existing among so many budding activists - whether you know it or not, you are all animal advocates for supporting and contributing to this blog.

I chose two winners tonight, and I've decided to have them begin and end the photograph series of my latest trip to the Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary. On Sunday, I took my sister and brother to the sanctuary to experience formerly farmed animals firsthand. Below is the beauty and joy of that experience.  

My hope for the animals? That each and every one of them, cows, pigs, deer, spiders and ladybugs, are treated with the love and respect that we grant our own pets.  - Melanie S. 

Mickey and Jo

My sister Whitney and Dylan.

Louise lets me give her a kiss.

Steve's affectionate reunion with Anne began here.

 

My brother with Louise.

  

A memorial for all the animals who have passed on.

 My hope for the animals of this earth is that some way, somehow, they all come to know that there are people who love them and are on their side. 

- Trista N.

 

I've said it before and I'll say it again: The Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary has my heart in a major way. I absolutely love this place and will miss it terribly when I make the move to Los Angeles. Please consider sponsoring an animal or donating to - or VISITING! - this unbelievably wonderful place. Many thanks to Rebecca Moore for our amazing tour of the grounds on Sunday, and for more information, please visit www.woodstocksanctuary.org.

What Holly Taught Me.

I haven't really publicized much of it on the blog, but back in May, I rescued a little kitty.

I was going about my business one morning when I heard one of my cats making some very strange sounds on the sill of my bedroom window. When I went to see what all of the fuss was about, I peeled back the window's curtain to find two huge, beautiful eyes looking right back at me. A stray cat - which is a frequent occurrence in my Brooklyn neighborhood - somehow found one of my other cats in the window and decided to engage in a staring contest with it. 

Feeling awful about her situation, I decided to open the window and give her a little food and water, and immediately, her affectionate flips and desperate pleas for a belly rub enamored me more than I expected. I made a decision - to bring this little girl inside, but only as a foster, since I already have three other precious rescue kitties of my own. I figured that I might as well take care of her and keep her off the mean Brooklyn streets (Brooklyn is great for people, but not as kind to its stray cats), so that she wouldn't get pregnant and make more stray kitties. Boy, was I in for a reckoning.

Holly - moments before devouring a bowl of popcorn

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About a month or so into it, this little rescue, who we named Holly, started looking somewhat heftier in the area around her belly. She was eating twice as much as my other cats and was increasingly hormonal and territorial as the weeks passed. After talking with Steve about it, researching on the internet, and talking to family and friends, it hit me. The kitty I brought in to keep from getting pregnant had been pregnant the entire time.

Steve and I were both scared and exhilarated by this news - I mean, finding a home for one cat had been difficult enough by this point, but more? How would we ever find a way to make this work? Having a deadline of Sept. 1st certainly didn't help either (which is the day we are planning to make the cross-country trek to our new home in Los Angeles). But for all of the fear and worry, we both decided this could be the best thing that ever happened to us - and even more so for Holly. Little did I know that the experience of watching and helping Holly give birth would completely change my life in a way I never expected. 

Holly hugging her first born.

On August 1st, Holly gave birth to five tremendously adorable kittens. The first three came out quickly and easily, with no complications (thank you, Mother Nature!). After about two and a half hours and no third kitten, I acted quickly and found a way to get a very tired Holly to push out a foot-first baby (one of the most difficult and least survived birthing positions for kittens) - a feat I look back on with so much glowing pride. After the fourth baby, Holly seemed finished and in good spirits as her kittens happily nursed. Steve and I decided to leave them all for a little bit - to be honest, we had been hovering over her like helicopter parents all day and this lady needed a serious break from us!

After consuming some much-needed comfort food at Foodswings, we came home to find, hiding under a towel in the bathroom, a fifth kitten. Completely cleaned but cold, we weren't sure if this baby got lost in the shuffle or was rejected by his exhausted mommy. None of that mattered to Steve or me - what mattered was it surviving. It seemed like an eternity of struggling to get little number five to latch onto a nipple, and when it happened, tears poured out of me as I realized that we saved a life that may have not been saved had we left our first-time mommy alone the rest of the night.

After everything was over, Steve and I watched in awe as these little babies, knowing exactly what to do, crawled over to Holly, who also knew exactly what to do, and nursed with abandon. For the most part, these little guys and gals have been only eating and sleeping, much like human babies. They've also been exploring the blanket they've lived on for their first six days of life, I've seen a few nipple fights between two hungry kittens, and mostly, they're enjoying the bliss of being innocent, comfortable, happy babies. It's pretty amazing.

What has been the greatest part in all of this? The beliefs within me that have grown insurmountably since watching Holly give birth - that every mother deserves the peace and respect of being able to give life on her own terms. That every mother deserves to nurse her babies for as long as needed to nourish them. That every baby deserves to be nourished, loved, and protected by its mother.

As I watched a beautiful and responsible feline mom do her thing with so much grace and inner wisdom, bittersweet feelings ran through me. Because while Steve and I were able to give Holly a safe place to make this transition, there are countless pigs, cows, turkeys, chickens, goats, sheep, and ducks - the list goes on and on - who are not given even a modicum of safety, peace, or respect as they experience the birth of their babies. We artificially place babies within these animals, then rip them away from each other soon after they are born, and for what? To consume the milk of another species that was never something we were supposed to take (and that we never needed in the first place). To eat the flesh of an animal whose natural born right should be to live and bear children peacefully. Why have we grown so distanced from the that truth? Why did we ever decide as a species that it was okay to take that away from them?

Harrison and Loretta at Farm Sanctuary. Read their story here.

Holly has shown me that I want to fight until the end of my life for these mommies and babies, because there are far too many humans who either aren't fighting or don't even know that there's a fight to be had in the first place. More than the violent act of eating the flesh of an animal, we need to focus on helping people learn about the massive violence we are inflicting on the mothers and babies of this world. We have confused them, exploited them, and taken away a right that was given to them by something much greater than ourselves. By consuming the eggs and the milk of other species, we contribute on a daily basis to the deaths of baby male chicks, baby male cows, and mother cows, pigs, chickens and other farmed animal mothers on a massive scale.

Colleen Patrick-Goudreau has a wonderful video about her thoughts on the female exploitation that occurs within the world of farming and consuming animals. I encourage you all to watch it, and, if you are still on the fence about consuming the by-products or flesh of animals, please reconsider. There are so many delicious, healthy, cholesterol-free alternatives to dairy and eggs, it's not even funny!

In May, a stray cat with babies in her belly was looking for a safe place to have them, and I decided to give that to her. I am forever thankful to have crossed paths with this extraordinary being. One day, I hope to be as good a mommy as Holly has been for her babies. In the meantime, I will continue to speak on behalf of animal mothers everywhere who deserve the same respect Holly was given. 

P.S. What a happy ending - we have managed to find homes for Holly and all of her babies. Thank you to everyone who helped spread the word and to those taking in these wonderful cats! 

For anyone curious about plant-based alternatives to eggs and milk, please visit my "Three Steps" page for more info.

No One Is Free When Others Are Oppressed: A Look Into Fowl Play (A Guest Blog by Steve)

About 97% of all the animals that are killed and exploited in the United States are used for food, yet these are the animals who typically have the fewest allies, the fewest advocates, that are working on their behalf. 

 -Nathan Runkle, founder of Mercy for Animals

Living in a world where the only way to get by is to keep up with the crowd, it's always nice to be informed of what's going on around us.  Unfortunately and all too often, we are kept in the dark.  There are many practices that go on where the truth is hidden from those of us on the outside.  In almost all cases, the outside represents the majority with those in the inner circle being a select few.  There couldn't be more of a prime example of this than the animal food industry.  

Photo courtesy of Mercy For Animals

Consumers have a right to know where their food comes from and animals have a right to have their story told. 

 -Nathan Runkle, founder of Mercy for Animals

Where does the meat that many eat for food come from?  What about eggs and milk?  And how does it get to you?  Many people may think they have an idea but are usually far from the truth.  The truth resides in a darkly veiled industry, one hidden away from the public eye.  Why close all the doors and cover all the windows?  What is there to hide?  An industry built on lies, abuse, torture, and suffering.  Few actually know about it, so it becomes a golden opportunity to reveal the hidden truths whenever anyone actually gets the chance.  The only way to stop the foul play that occurs on the inside is to create such pivotal opportunities to enlighten and educate - precisely what is done in Fowl Play.

In fact, if one person is unkind to an animal it is considered to be cruelty, but where a lot of people are unkind to animals, especially in the name of commerce, the cruelty is condoned and, once large sums of money are at stake, will be defended to the last by otherwise intelligent people. 

 - Ruth Harrison, author of Animal Machines

Photo courtesy of Fowl Play

Fowl Play, an award-winning documentary by the groundbreaking animal advocacy organization, Mercy for Animals, takes viewers behind the closed doors of the egg-laying industry and shines light on the appalling practices employed to bring food to the table.  The film introduces us to factory farmed hens and their tragic plight, animals who were survivors of the system, and many people who want to make a difference.  Through interviews with an animal behaviorist, a veterinarian, animal rescuers, some newly enlightened students, and MFA activists, we learn more about the story behind the animals who end up on our plates - how they are neglected, how they suffer, and, ultimately, how they die.  Yet, on a brighter note, we also get to learn about their eclectic personalities, their intelligence and sensitivity, and why they deserve good lives while in this world, just like us humans. 

Sharing a moment with a rescued hen at WFAS

 If anybody would get to know chickens, they would think twice about having them on their plate.  

- Mindy Mallet, founder of Sunrise Sanctuary 

What Fowl Play does a masterful job of is bridging the common disconnect between people's beliefs and actions.  While the majority of Americans are opposed to the inhumane treatment of animals, meat, egg, and dairy consumption are steadily on the rise.  Something as simple as seeing a visual to connect with a passing thought, or testimony from someone who has seen and experienced the horrors of animal life and death in factory farms and slaughterhouses, becomes enough to make the concepts of right and wrong much clearer.  What is normally an invisible, fleeting choice - what will I eat today? - finally gets brought back into the forefront, as we realize once again: for every action there is a reaction; for every choice we make, there is a consequence. We are responsible for our own choices.  What consequences do we wish to bring along with them?

On Mercy for Animals' website, their mission statement says: 

"MFA believes non-human animals are irreplaceable individuals with morally significant interests and hence rights. This includes the right to live free from unnecessary suffering and exploitation."

 For all those animals lovers out there, for all those who love life in any shape or form, free from suffering and exploitation - Fowl Play is a necessity to watch.  For the animals.  Who deserve better.

If we really clearly want to live the way we would want to be treated, if we as ethical people want to live by some form of a golden rule, then we need to learn to include a bigger sphere of animals within that circle of compassion that we, for now, only permit to extend to our companion animals. 

- Holly Cheever, DVM 

 

To the KMIV family: 

Fowl Play is currently on Netflix, but it won't be available to rent until enough people place it in their queue. If you have a NetFlix account, please place it in your queue today!

Fowl Play is also available to buy - click here to learn more!

Bottom line: Please support this extraordinary, moving, and heartbreaking documentary. The more people who stand behind work like this means a better life  one day soon for farmed animals everywhere.  

Thanks to Matt Rice, Rocco Chierichella, and the team at Mercy For Animals for their life-changing documentary and vital work in the animal advocacy community. All quotes above are taken from Fowl Play. To learn more, please visit: www.fowlplaymovie.com.

hector.

Her dreams were always vivid, colorful. She lived for her dreams; for she only was alive in them. Her dreams were built of green grass and tall fields of corn, of childhood and summer... Most of her time here was spent dreaming, since that was all she - or anyone else - was allowed. It was difficult to understand why, really. Why someone felt her so unfit for the world; assigned her to die out her days in a cage.

The above is an excerpt from hector, a searing, heartbreaking, and daringly beautiful new book by animal advocate and author, K.I. Hope. hector tells the tale of a female in the bleakest of moments - caged in a world she desperately wants to escape, with little hope to hang onto, and longing for the day when she can finally have her freedom. The fact that this female happens to be a cow locked away in a dairy factory farm is what gives hector such extraordinary gravitas, weight, and power.

As I read the book, I was struck by how universal several of the messages behind it, around it, and through it were - that no being should ever be caged, and that in the darkest of times, there is always hope, however small it may seem. In the style of Cormac McCarthy's The Road, hector is a tale of loss, of sorrow, and of deep and utter loneliness due to the perils of being trapped in an unbearable and seemingly hopeless situation. What allows us to go to the depths with hector is in following and trusting in the story's heroine, a dairy cow perilously fighting to escape her tiny cage and find the son who was violently torn away from her shortly after birth.  

She looked back to her son, his eye the only part visible, and he stared at her with it, saying, I know you can't help but lying; you can't make promises for there was no future for them together, there was no forever, only this... waiting for a man to come and take their life. 

I won't tell you whether our heroine finds her son or if she is ever able to escape her bleak fate, because I leave that up to you to find out. What I will say is that hector is not only a must read for all of the animal lovers out there, but a vital tale of domination and abuse that is essential for our current society to experience. Whether you eat the flesh, milk, and eggs of animals or not, this story will deepen your compassion and stir your mind into passionate action towards fighting for a better world. 

 On K.I.'s website, you'll find these words about hector:

This is a love letter to the exploited & oppressed, beaten, downtrodden and abused.  This is an open declaration of hate to people who may or may not be you.

This message remains clear throughout our heroine's entire journey, and only gets stronger as the story progresses. In hector, we see someone deeply hoping for anything better than what she has been given - which is barely an inch of freedom - and we find ourselves fighting desparately with our own human conditioning and beliefs as her struggle deepens. 

Please drop everything and buy this book - your world will forever be changed by living for a few moments in the shoes of a being like so many who are victims of today's cruelty. In living like this, their unimaginably painful lives - and deaths - will not be in vain.

I was able to connect with K.I. recently about the book, and here's what she had to say:

Kiss Me, I'm Vegan: What inspired you to write hector? 

K.I.: Primarily, the universe, I suppose! I still distinctly remember the moment when I had the idea - I was driving into my apartment complex during my last semester of college, thinking about how much I liked Animal Farm, because it was a story that was on the surface about one thing, but underneath about something completely different, and how I'd like to do something along those lines. And suddenly I had the idea to tell the life story of a dairy cow - a creature that is marginalized to the point of utter nonexistence - but to present her story as that of another marginalized population - women in prison. 

Secondarily; my frequent aversion to factual information. hector is nothing if not a synthesis of the emotions associated with facts I have collected over my personal decade of vegetarianism and veganism. When reading landmark non-fiction books like Animal Liberation, The Sexual Politics of Meat, Dominion or Mad Cowboy, one has a visceral reaction to the situations described therein, which will obviously vary from person to person. I took my own reactions and created characters for all of them - empathy, disgust, anger and grief are all well-represented. I do recognize the role facts play in discourse, but I feel there is somewhat of an oversaturation currently - we always only hear about 18% of this, the majority of that. I felt I needed to fill an emotional void, so I wrote hector.

The title, which I get asked frequently, came from my handy thesaurus: I was searching for synonyms for "cow," and there was the word "hector," meaning to bully. It was rather perfect, as the one word referred both to bovines and to how they are treated.

KMIV: What surprised you most about the experience of writing a book about dairy cows? 

K.I.: How horrible it was emotionally. I wrote it in one month; I woke up every day at 7am and wrote straight through, pausing only to consult a brief plot outline. I cried and slept the rest of the time. 

The other surprising facet was the strange twists and turns the novel took without my prior conceptualization. I would write things, horrible things, without thinking, and then see the words staring back at me, breathing their own kind of half-life. I had to question myself, like, "Am I a sick person? Do I enjoy thinking about these things? Is this really who I am underneath?" I told myself that it wasn't me; that I was only telling a true story - I was helping by telling the story, and whatever I had to suffer through was inconsequential; and the messenger is innocent. Though this did little, really, because just by existing a small part of me still feels responsible.

   

KMIV: I often felt while reading hector that I could have been reading about a human female's situation - it was very representative of many feminist ideas and abuses for me. First of all, why dairy cows? And second of all, why did you choose to blur the lines of identity with the cows you wrote about?  

K.I.: I'm so glad that shone through! Carol J. Adams' brand of feminism was a huge inspiration, as she made it obvious, in my mind, in The Sexual Politics of Meat that any discussion of animal rights that does not include women's rights (and vice versa) is incomplete. To create a narrative, then, that concerns itself with the most egregious forms of animal abuse, one also has to create within the narrative a story of women's rights.

In a way, it's already come true: a few weeks ago, I received an email from a wonderful individual who read hector and said it profoundly affected her. She told me that she was struggling with balancing her diet, health problems and ethics; but after reading my book, is now rededicating herself to veganism. That was without doubt the single proudest moment of my life - it was precisely why I wrote the book. It sounds tired, but we always say: "If I can help just one person, I've succeeded," but it really is true, especially when the average vegan saves the lives of nearly 100 animals per year.

Dairy is a seemingly innocuous practice to many people. Maybe it's because nothing is killed, or those idyllic campaigns about how happy the cows are; I don't know, but there is a disconnect where many people - including myself at one point - can't quite conceptualize what exactly dairy is. In order for me to fully come to terms with its abhorrent nature, I had to put myself in her situation.

So the absolute goal was to create characters that were relatable; in order to be relatable to the maximum number of people, they therefore they had to appear human. For many people - the kind I hope will read this book - empathizing with an animal is a ridiculous, sentimental notion. However, those sample people would consider it amoral to not empathize with a human who was in such a circumstance. That was the vision I had: a naked female human, held captive in filthy conditions, is artificially inseminated - a polite euphemism for "rape." She gives birth and then guards come, take her child away and begin pumping her breast milk into bottles. For that, that is the truth about dairy. I intended to create, like Animal Farm, something that was on the surface one thing - the story of a female human in a dystopian nightmare - but underneath, was actually the life cycle of a dairy cow, so that we may stop looking at our world in such divisive terms as "female" and "male" or "human" and "animal."

Lastly, I firmly believe that people will still partake in a system they know rationally to be flawed if they feel morally their participation is excusable. I wanted to approach what is rather rapidly becoming a sort of zeitgeist, that is to say in the realm of the more mainstream animal rights movement the argument is often scientific; and instead argue a purely moral standpoint. I hope then that I will be able to reach those segments of the population to whom science maybe isn't as important as religion, or logic isn't as much a driving force as ethics. I think there's a part of all of us that believes in something better, in a cleaner way of living, independent of what any dogma - scientific or spiritual - might suggest, and I wanted to tap into that as well. 

KMIV: What are your hopes for hector? 

K.I.: I hope, obviously, that hector will continue to be read, and the vegan movement will only grow and expand from here, which happily seems to be the current trend. Also, that in our society, people find themselves asking more and more frequently, "What is right?" and listening to the little voice that tells us it is nonviolence and compassion. The aim is to start forging a world where we are no longer separated, and can see and embrace our differences from other things while fully allowing them to exist as they are. Ultimately, I hope one day, be it decades or centuries from now, hector will serve as a chronicle to future humans of the way things used to be.

 KMIV: My hopes exactly! K.I. - can you tell me a little bit more about your story?

K.I.: Well, I was born in Palo Alto on July 25, 1985 and grew up in the Bay Area. I first became vegetarian at age 12, after the surprisingly transformative experience of Outdoor Education. After my first year of high school I dropped out; instead I attend community college full-time, moving on to university two years later. I started writing for my college newspaper, and then moved on to The Daily Journal, a free daily in San Mateo, CA. I have since made a living as a magazine editor and grant writer, and currently do contract editing for an education publishing company. I graduated from San Francisco State with a Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Studies. I live with a little fluffy five-year-old Papillon mix rescue in Central Oregon, who hates how much time I spend on the computer. In my spare time I am finishing my second novel, This is Not a Flophouse.

I have volunteered with Yes! on Prop 2, No on Prop 8, In Defense of Animals, The San Francisco Vegetarian Society, A New Way Forward and the San Mateo County Democrats, registering voters of any political affiliation.

Fun fact: I have the Isaac Bashevis Singer quote from "The Letter Writer" tattooed on my right arm: "In relation to them, all people are Nazis; for the animals it is an eternal Treblinka. And yet man demands compassion from heaven." 

Many thanks to K.I. Hope for this extraordinary book and interview. To learn more, please visit www.kihope.com

  

Listen up KMIV-ers:

I will be giving away TWO SIGNED COPIES of hector to two very lucky blog readers!

To enter --

Please email me at kissmyvegan@gmail.com with a one-sentence answer to this question:

What is your hope for the animals of this Earth?

The deadline for this giveaway is Monday, August 9th.

Reasons to Smile.

With Bold Native writer and director Denis Henry Hennelly

1. Getting to see the New York premiere of Bold Native, which completely blew my mind. Check out more info about this movie. Right. Now!!!

(I'll be reviewing the premiere on the blog, of course. Stay tuned...)

Just to get you excited about it, here's the awesome trailer:

2. Meeting John Joseph - author of Meat is for Pussies - and vegan bodybuilder Robert Cheeke (pictured with me at right) last night.

3. The always lovely Jasmin Singer chatting it up at Our Hen House about "Rock It Out II," the Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary fundraiser I organized last week!

4. Hector, a daring and heartbreaking new book by vegan author K. I. Hope, which I will be reviewing on the blog later this week.

5. My sister choosing to stop eating eggs recently (on top of already eating vegetarian for a few months now) - go Whit!

 6. Speaking of eggs, my hubby attending a very important screening last Sunday of Fowl Play, a powerful documentary about the inner workings of the egg industry, brought to us by the tremendously talented activists at Mercy for Animals. More to come soon!

7. Alicia Silverstone bravely and compassionately covering the abuse at the Conklin Dairy Farm in Ohio yesterday on her website, The Kind Life. Check out the post here!

8. Two delicious ways to support animals in the near future: Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary's "All-You-Can-Eat Vegan Ice Cream Freak-Out" Fundraiser in Connecticut on August 8th and Sea Shepard's "S'more Protection for the Oceans" Benefit Party at The V Spot Cafe in Brooklyn on August 9th! Yum!

9. My friend Molly's amazing new blog, The Vegan Everything, as well as her recent post about my fundraiser. Become a follower, and make sure to keep an eye on this awesome budding vegan blogger!

10. "I have far too much respect for the vastness and mystery of the human journey to attempt to make anyone's choices for them. My prayer, and that of many, is that we all have the courage to change the things we can, the serenity to accept the things we can't, and the wisdom to know the difference."  - John Robbins, The Food Revolution

11. The opportunity I had last week to make french toast on LeaveItBetter.com. Check the video out here!

12. And now my biggest reason to smile... 

Drum roll please...

June Jamboree at WFAS, June 2010

Come September, I will be working as the "Cage-Free Egg Campaigner" for the Humane League on the West Coast! What does that mean for the animals? Well, hopefully, it will mean saving many chickens from the horrendous fate of living in cages that keep them from ever stretching their limbs or moving around. A tiny step towards a real chance at life and a major smile-inducer for this vegan blogger. Woot!

What are YOUR reasons to smile today?