The Sistah Vegan Project

BREAKING NEWS: Man Dies; Veganism Blamed

Race-consciousness, Hip Hop, and Veganism: A New Sistah Vegan Book Project Update

Here is an update to my newest project:

Title: “G’s Up Hoes Down:” Black Masculinity, Veganism, and Ethical Consumption (The Remix).

Some of you have asked why would I use “hoes” in my title. “Isn’t that sexist and misogynistic, Breeze?” So, let me make it clearer (especially if you have not watched my Oberlin May 2014 talk that explains this). Well, I am actually not referring to Snopp Dogg’s song from 20 years ago, but DJ Cavem’s song from his Produce Section: The Harvest album from 2012. DJ Cavem is a vegan and expert gardener who teaches youths about being ecoconscious, cooking veganism, and awareness around the prison industrial complex. DJ Cavem uses “Gs” to mean “Organic growers” and “hoes” literally as the gardening tool to cultivate healthy and strong communities.

Cee Knowledge (left), Breeze Harper, DJ Cavem (right)

Book Description: Vegan mainstream rhetoric often falls into a post-racial mindset; that is, the assumption that since the Civil Rights Acts, racism and legacies of colonialism are no longer significant impediments to achieving equality in the USA. Furthermore, rarely does the vegan mainstream reflect on how structural racism shapes one’s logic, goals, and communication strategies around ethical consumption.

In this book, I will explore how key Black male vegans are employing hip-hop methods to create race-conscious and decolonial approaches to vegan activism. Such icons will include vegan chef Bryant Terry, Kevin Tillman of the Vegan Hip Hop Movement, hip hop and eco conscious musician DJ Cavem, and Stic.Man of Dead Prez.

These men are examples of alternative black masculinities, cooking up complex and complicated models of ethical consumption, environmental justice, and nutritional activism that you won’t find in the popular PETA campaigns or the bestselling books Skinny Bitch and Skinny Bastard.

What also makes this book unique is that I will use social science based methodologies such as black feminism, decoloial theory, and critical pedagogies of consumption to analyze the work of these men. Simultaneously, the writing style will be fun, easily accessible, inspirational and critical; one need not have a graduate degree in critical theory to understand it.

Goal: Ultimately, the goal of the book is to show how intersectionality of race-conscious, decolonial thought, and hip hop activism do not DISTRACT from the tenets of veganism, but in fact strengthen it. This is Sistah Vegan Anthology’s sibling and long overdue. If you enjoyed Sistah Vegan, you will enjoy this new book project, which I gave an amazing introductory lecture about at Oberlin College this past spring 2014.

Delivery date to press: Fall 2016.

Funds will be used to pay for travel to areas such as Denver, CO to interview DJ Cavem, copy editing, proof reading, cover design, a new computer (mine died), and promoting the book.

I already have a press for the book. Once I sign the contract, I will let my fans know who it is with.

If you also want to know more about my writing and success in this field, you can go to http://www.abreezeharper.com .

Update: G’s Up Hoes Down:” Black Masculinity, Veganism, and Ethical Consumption (The Remix)

I have updated my new book goals and TITLE. Originally titled “Living Bling, Going Green”: Redefining Black Masculinities Through Hip Hop and Veganism, I changed it to this….

Title: “G’s Up Hoes Down:” Black Masculinity, Veganism, and Ethical Consumption (The Remix).

Cee Knowledge (left), Breeze Harper, DJ Cavem (right)

Book Description: Vegan mainstream rhetoric often falls into a post-racial mindset; that is, the assumption that since the Civil Rights Acts, racism and legacies of colonialism are no longer significant impediments to achieving equality in the USA. Furthermore, rarely does the vegan mainstream reflect on how structural racism shapes one’s logic, goals, and communication strategies around ethical consumption.

In this book, I will explore how key Black male vegans are employing hip-hop methods to create race-conscious and decolonial approaches to vegan activism. Such icons will include vegan chef Bryant Terry, Kevin Tillman of the Vegan Hip Hop Movement, hip hop and eco conscious musician DJ Cavem, and Stic.Man of Dead Prez.

These men are examples of alternative black masculinities, cooking up complex and complicated models of ethical consumption, environmental justice, and nutritional activism that you won’t find in the popular PETA campaigns or the bestselling books Skinny Bitch and Skinny Bastard.

What also makes this book unique is that I will use social science based methodologies such as black feminism, decoloial theory, and critical pedagogies of consumption to analyze the work of these men. Simultaneously, the writing style will be fun, easily accessible, inspirational and critical; one need not have a graduate degree in critical theory to understand it.

Goal: Ultimately, the goal of the book is to show how intersectionality of race-conscious, decolonial thought, and hip hop activism do not DISTRACT from the tenets of veganism, but in fact strengthen it. This is Sistah Vegan Anthology’s sibling and long overdue. If you enjoyed Sistah Vegan, you will enjoy this new book project, which I gave an amazing introductory lecture about at Oberlin College this past spring 2014.

Delivery date to press: Fall 2016.

Funds will be used to pay for travel to areas such as Denver, CO to interview DJ Cavem, copy editing, proof reading, cover design, a new computer (mine died), and promoting the book.

I already have a press for the book. Once I sign the contract, I will let my fans know who it is with.

If you also want to know more about my writing and success in this field, you can go to http://www.abreezeharper.com .

ThankTank Creative is to Blame!

Foraging in my neighborhood: is it a privilege?

I like to forage while I walk from home to get the kids from nursery school. I push them back up the hill in our double stroller and it takes 80-90 minutes. On the way, we eat herbs and fruit that grow every where. Plums, Meyer lemons, figs, blackberries, rosemary, and lemon verbena to name a few.

Yesterday I passed by a beautiful bush with clear purple berries. See photo above. Do you know what it is?

Is foraging a privilege or not? I feel like it is for me, for the most part. I live in North Berkeley. Most people who have a house here can afford a little land and have it landscaped professionally. For the renters of apartments and homes, the landlords do the same to the land. They have edible plants planted, but it seems more aesthetic than to eat for these residents. Why do I think this? The fruit usually ends up falling to the ground and rotting. So, this waste bothers me, so I try collect as much as I can, while walking down the sidewalk. If it’s on an apartment building complex, I do the same. I make sure that I’m picking from plants in which it is obvious no one cares to use or harvest it. If residents don’t want passerbys forage, they post signs stating that and I respect those wishes. At the same time, I try to be careful of how I forage and where. I know many may not want to hear this, but as a visibly Black person, I try to make sure when it is appropriate to forage. My area doesn’t have many Black folk and I worry that I may be read as ‘stealing’ or ‘trespassing’ when I forage, vs. when, say, white looking people do. I am acutely aware that whenever someone is arrested in the area for home break ins, I see the cops arresting a Black person 90% of the time. Again, I wonder what this does to the perception of the non Black residents who live there. Just some food for thought…

I also think about whether or not there is a connection to rises or declines in urban foraging to gentrification happening in the SF Bay area. Anyone have a take on that?

Also, do you forage? If so, why or why not? Like how I write? Wanna support more? Check out my 3rd book project about Black male vegan heroes: 

On my new novel, funding change, hip hop vegan book, and my birthday campaign

Ok, I am going to be more direct. I have had a problem with having enough confidence to ask for help. Here’s the deal: I have 5000+ followers combined, in terms of FB, Twitter, and my WordPress blog. I need SV project to be funded. I have done so much for folk and I am simply asking for $5-$10 per fan (if you can afford it) to help me do this work FULL TIME. If I could get 5000+ folk to do this, I could continue to grow this work and help humans and non-human animals even more effectively. Thus far, I received less than $200 in donations, since asking this for my birthday campaign raising wishes on May 30, 2014. I do appreciate what has already been donated, but I need more for this project to survive and thrive!

Last year I raised $4000 of the $80,000 I need (that is what gofundme shows right now: the combined total, not just the $200 from last week). So, let me know if you can invest in me and the SV Project. I write books, but I don’t get advances and I get about $600 a year in royalties from Sistah Vegan. I had a Research Fellow appointment at UC Davis, from 2013-2014, but it was unpaid(some people have asked why I need a salary for Sistah Vegan when I have a ‘job’ at UC Davis). This is my birthday wish for this year. Consider doing automatic monthly donations of about $5-$15 per month: Go Fund Me : http://www.gofundme.com/33mv2k

If you can’t afford to donate money, please consider donating in other ways: marketing, editing, etc. For example, several women donated their editing and proofreading skills to make Scars possible. I was so overjoyed by such kindness. Others have offered to use social media to market last years Sistah Vegan confernce events.

More about my new novel: Scars: Black Lesbian Experience in Rural White New England. 

DJ Cavem’s  work and Produce Section album can be accessed here.

An intro to the new hip hop, black men, vegan book project: “Real Gs Got Hoes:” Veganism, Black Masculinity, and Ethical Consumption.

Also, below is the full painting that Sarah Juanita Dorsey painted for Scars. Come on y’all,  admit it: she is dope, brilliant, and awesome. The cover photo is a depiction of Savannah Penelope Sales, the main character.

The Fork in the Road: Ruminations on My Birthday

Updated: May 30, 2014 10:25 AM PST

Today, May 30, is my birthday. What a wonderful year it has been! I gave birth to my third child, Kira Satya, on November 5, 2013. Another successful vegan pregnancy, she came into the world at nearly nine pounds. My birthday wish for this year is simple: Can you help me continue doing my work by funding the project or pointing me to people you think would benefit from hearing me give lectures or act as a consultant? Thank you to everyone who helped me reach 4.5% of my goal over the last 12 months.  Thank you to those who donated in other ways, such as editing my new book as well as creating a brilliant cover for (wahoo to Sarah Dorsey who shares the same birthday) the new manuscript, guiding me through difficult times, or watching my children while I was writing a new talk.

Recap of my year

During summer 2013, and under the mentorship of stellar food systems scholar, Dr Ryan Galt, I started my new Sistah Vegan project research: gathering the perspectives of Black vegan men who use hip hop pedagogies for their food, health, and animal rights activism. (Thank you Dr. Ryan Galt for offering me the opportunity to do this work at UC Davis!)  In 2014, I presented my new research at Dickinson College, Oberlin College, and Pacific Lutheran University. I am appreciative that all three institutions provided childcare for my newborn so I could bring her with me to nurse on demand. I am also very grateful for the plethora of people who have inspired me to continue with the Sistah Vegan project, despite me wanting to give up; particularly because I felt so hopeless and questioned my purpose in Academia. Such hopelessness came after I received nothing but rejection letters from all academic positions I had applied to.

The hardest time for me came during the fall of 2013, when I received an email from someone who I had asked to write me letters of recommendations in the past. This person was one of my main professor mentors and someone I really trusted. They had emailed that they would no longer write me letters of recommendations because they had always found me to be “unprofessional” and not “intellectually rigorous” when it came to my pursuit of an Academic career. I had received that email the morning I was in labor with Kira Satya. There was really no way of telling if the letters that person wrote was the main reason I wasn’t even afforded a phone interview anywhere. Interestingly, the letter created a fork in the road for me: I could give up and give in to anger and self-pity…or, I could see the letter as an opportunity to test my commitment to the Sistah Vegan Project and try to find other ways to keep it alive…which would probably mean having to say goodbye to Academe.

After weeks of emotional and mental anguish that I allowed that letter to cause me, I decided that my 25 year goal of becoming a professor wasn’t the only way to keep my critical race, critical food, and critical vegan studies research, writing, and activism alive.  I had to remind myself that I had successfully put together the first Sistah Vegan Conference in fall 2013 and received a lot of emails from people who said the event really shifted their consciousness; the event was not affiliated with any university at all.  In addition, even though one of my main mentors had decided that they didn’t want to support me, I also had to remind myself of the many mentors who have supported me and found my way of engaging in research and activism, beneficial. I nearly let that email from this one mentor make me forget about all the other mentors who have supported me, including Carol J Adams, Psyche Williams Forson, Bryant Terry, DJ Cavem, Zenju Earthlyn Manuel, Kwanda and James Ford, Riche Richardson,  David Leonard, Martin Rowe , Lauren Ornelas, Katherine McKitrrick and Carolyn Finney to name a few.

So, what was the lesson learned? Not everyone will experience my way of doing things as professional or intellectually rigorous. And sometimes even those that we thought were our mentors and that we trusted may also no longer want to support our vision or our way of doing things. And you know what? That is okay.   Over the past eight months, I have tried to transition into making the Sistah Vegan Project my full time work while keeping these things in mind.

This morning, I also received word that my new novel, Scars: A Black Lesbian Experience in Rural White New England, is now ready for production through Sense Publishers. They are an awesome academic press. It was timely to receive the message from senior editor Patricia Leavy, a professor and a vanguard in the field of social fiction. Patricia Leavy read Scars within a week of receiving it last year. After years of me trying to find a place for my book, it was Patricia enthusiastically who offered me a contract. My work fit Sense Publisher’s new social fiction series which seeks social fiction, in the form of novels, to address societal problems. The key to the series is the use of real qualitative social science research that is translated into novel form.

Overall, I just wanted to let you know that when I receive emails of support from you all, it reminds me why it is important to do what I believe in and to not let obstacles deter me. Every single email I receive from my fans, really fuels me and re-centers me! Much love to all of you for your generosity and belief in my work.

Below is the organic and Vegan cake my husband and kids made for me. Yum!

Sick of Children’s Music That Promotes Speciesism? Me Too.

As a picky mom when it comes to my children’s musical entertainment, it is hard to find vegan-friendly and non-human animal friendly music! I am glad we have Michal “Peanut” Karmi to help change that.

Michal is amazing and she visited us here in Berkeley, CA a few days ago. We met Michal a few years ago while she was in graduate school at UC Berkeley. A very committed animal rights oriented vegan, she also has the unique talent of connecting amazingly with little kids through song. My children, 2.5 and 5, are obsessed with her first album. She has a new album she is working on and I highly recommend it. It will help kids think in non-human animal friendly ways. And let’s face it: most children’s music albums in the USA are quite speciesist.  Please support her newest album through this kickstarter campaign. Also, enjoy the photos of her singing to our family. She is a wonderful spirit!