I want to talk about veganism as an expression of ecowomanist practice and philosophy. Ecowomanism is a social change perspective based on a holistic perception of creation encompassing humans and all living organisms plus the nonliving environment and the spirit world. The focus of ecowomanism is healing and honoring this collective human-environmental-spiritual superorganism through intentional social and environmental rebalancing as well as the spiritualization of human practices. Ecowomanism assumes that this superorganism has been wounded by careless human endeavor and that this damage hurts humans, animals, plants, and the nonliving environment—and offends the spirit(s).
Veganism is an expression of ecowomanism because it is a practice rooted in conscious harmlessness, which is a major tenet of ecowomanism's healing praxis.1 Conscious harmlessness is closely aligned with the principles of ahimsa as expounded in Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist scriptures. Ahimsa means nonviolence and respect for all life. While individuals vary in the degree to which they practice various aspects of veganism (or even whether they practice veganism at all), the assumption of ecowomanism, being a gentle philosophy, is that all movement toward greater harmlessness is of value, regardless of an individual's starting point. Veganism is a strong expression of conscious harmlessness toward animals and plants and the earth's other resources. It is aligned with a variety of spiritual belief systems that suggest a relationship between biological self-purification and spiritual growth. Thus, from an ecowomanist perspective, veganism supports both physical and spiritual well-being at both collective and individual levels. Last but not least, veganism is an expression of love, and love is a central social change modality within both womanism and ecowomanism.2 Love, broadly conceived, is an expansive and enlivening force that counteracts the restrictive and deadening forces of fear and anger. Thus, love is a social change modality while veganism is a healing tool for people and the earth.
The story of my own gradual transition into veganism is closely intertwined with the story of my transition into womanist philsophy. Before I tell that story, however, I will explain my perspectives on both veganism and womanism, particularly for readers who may be unfamiliar with either.
Veganism, as I define it now, can be described at its simplest as the practice of refusing animal-based foods and products. Most vegans, however, espouse a more complex set of beliefs and practices, including an interest in environmental sustainability and social justice in the production of food; a preference for organic and minimally processed foods that have not been genetically modified (non-GMOs); adherence to principles of food combining and healing through plant-based foodstuffs; support for products that have not been subjected to animal testing; interest in alternative, naturalistic, or integral health/medicinal practices; and an overall concern for mind–body wellness. Thus, veganism is not just a way of eating; it is a way of life.
People choosing veganism offer a number of distinct rationales, from practical to ethical: disliking meat; love of animals; health concerns; politico-economic commitments; and philosophical or spiritual beliefs. Many people who are vegans endorse several of these rationales simultaneously.
People who advocate for or practice veganism based on a love for animals often argue that animals, like humans, have rights. Being sentient creatures, animals have feelings and experience pain and pleasure. They become stressed by the farming practices (such as overcrowding, confinement, injection of hormones and antibiotics, bodily mutilation or medical neglect, and consumption of unnatural feedstuffs) and the life-terminating procedures used in meat production.3 Animal experimentation is considered cruel and unnecessary; it is assumed that not only are alternative means of product testing available that can ensure human safety, but also that products that cannot be safely tested without harming humans or animals shouldn't be offered for human use.4 People who choose veganism based on a love for animals are most likely to reject not only animal-based foods but also other animal-based products, such as leather, various cosmetics (for example, lipstick, which often contains bat dung, or shampoo, which often contains placental byproducts), and medicines derived from animal sources. For these individuals, alternative shoes and clothes, cosmetics, and remedies are available.
People who choose veganism based on health concerns are often worried about the effect of stressed, diseased, and/or drugged animal flesh on the human body. These individuals are also aware of the length of time that meat takes to digest in the human intestinal system and the likelihood of putrefaction during that process, which leads to a variety of human ailments, from flatulence and constipation, to halitosis, skin problems, parasites, and even, potentially, colon cancer.5 Hormones injected into animals to stimulate milk production or to affect the quality of meat contribute to the over-estrogenization of humans, disrupting the hormonal balance in children and adults, resulting in everything from early puberty and premenstrual syndrome (PMS) to infertility.6 Antibiotics administered to animals contribute to the development of drug-resistant bacterial strains, thus increasing the risk of bacteria-based illnesses in both animals and humans. In addition, vegans with health concerns often wonder whether animals fed unnatural foodstuffs (for example, fat-soaked newspaper, the offal of their farm-mates, or GMO grain) can actually yield healthful food for humans. Factory-farmed animals drink pesticide- and hormone-laced water, indirectly transferring these chemicals to the human system. For people with health concerns, meat eating is just plain risky. Vegans whose primary rationale is health-related are also those most likely to insist that their plant-based foodstuffs meet the highest standards of purity and safety.
Vegans whose chief concern is the relationship between the consumption of animal products and other politico-economic considerations may focus on a variety of problems. For instance, vegan ecofeminists focus on the symbolic connection between meat production, the oppression of women, and pornography (the dissection, objectification, sale, and consumption of women and animals).7 Other vegans are concerned with the relation between factory farming and the destruction of the world's rainforests, particularly for cattle production. This links to a concern with global warming, which is exaerbated by removal of carbon repositories such as trees.8 Some vegans are concerned about economic justice and fair trade practices, particularly how large-scale meat production can interfere with local, diversified economies and family farms, and divert needed natural resources, such as water and land, away from people who already live at subsistence levels, particularly in countries outside the U.S. Some people are morally opposed to large corporations, hyperconsumption, and the excesses of capitalism generally and express this sentiment through veganism. They may pay particular attention to who makes or sells the products they consume.
People whose veganism is rooted in philosophical or spiritual beliefs are often aligned with, or students of, religions and faiths that advocate nonviolence or restrict the consumption of animal foods. Religions, including but not limited to Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, and the Baha'i Faith, all advocate a plant-based diet somewhere within their writings or traditions.9 In some instances, veganism is considered a form of mercy or respect for animals; in other cases, veganism is a way to protect the body as a temple for the spirit and thus to prepare a physical substrate for enlightenment. In The Essene Gospels of Peace: Book 1, for example, one discovers that Jesus advocated a vegan, raw-foods diet (and even colonic irrigations!).10 Some ecospiritual, nature-based, and pagan traditions also endorse veganism. In addition to these religious and spiritual perspectives, there have historically also been particular philosophical traditions that advocate veganism. At this point in time, veganism itself is considered a philosophical tradition, even a religion, by some.
While veganism may sound rigid and ideological, I would argue that this is a misconception. While some vegans, for instance members of the Straight Edge community, demand unswerving commitment to vegan ideals and practices, many people practice some form of partial veganism. For instance, many vegans refrain from eating meat, dairy, and eggs, yet eat honey or wear leather. Other vegans shop vegan and eat vegan at home but look the other way at a vegetarian restaurant for dishes that use a small amount of butter, cream, or cheese. Some vegans may take a bite of cake that contains eggs at the party of a really good friend who isn't vegan. Some vegans are vegan everywhere except at their grandmother's house! You get the idea: for many people, veganism is a principle, not a law. Some hardcore vegans reject these “sloppier” vegans as profligates, but an ecowomanist perspective, as I mentioned above, would be gentler, respecting nonjudgmentally an individual's right to decide when and where they will engage in veganism (or any other dietary practice). Having said that, let me now turn my attention to womanism.
As I have defined it in my article, “Womanism on Its Own,” in The Womanist Reader, Womanism “is a social change perspective rooted in Black women's and other women of color's everyday experiences and everyday methods of problem solving in everyday spaces, extended to the problem of ending all forms of oppression for all people, restoring the balance between people and the environment/nature, and reconciling human life with the spiritual dimension.”11 Thus, womanism is a tripartite theory, philosophy, praxis—whatever you want to call it—that rests upon three intertwined relationships: humans to humans, humans to environment, and humans to the spirit world. The assumption is that imbalance and the need for healing or rectification exist in all these relationships; the agency of the womanist is to promote and advance healing in any or all of these areas. Social change is thus equated with healing. Ecowomanism, in particular, is most concerned with the humans-to-environment relationship, but not without regard for the way human group dynamics and the spirit world are fundamentally interconnected with it. Stated differently, all of these entities—humans, the environment, and the spirit world—interpenetrate and co-constitute each other; they are not really separate, even though we talk as though they are. This axiom underlies and animates womanism.
Stated succinctly, womanism exhibits five overarching characteristics: 1) It is antioppressionist; 2) it is vernacular; 3) it is nonideological; 4) it is communitarian; and 5) it is spiritualized. That is, it is concerned nonpreferentially with all forms of oppression, named and unnamed; it is identified with and gains its soul from everyday people; it neither advocates nor enforces a party line and instead recognizes only the quest for the betterment of humankind in its relationship to nature and the spirit world; it rests on the principle of commonwealth, which requires the harmonization and coordination of the interests of individuals and diverse collectivities; and it takes spirit—however defined—as a given, allowing spirit to infuse all politics and progress. Given its breadth, its overt spirituality, and its operationalization of social change as healing rather than protest, integration rather than disruption, I argue that womanism is not a form of feminism, but rather is a distinct and independent (albeit mutually reinforcing) perspective.12
Ecowomanism is most evident in the life work of Alice Walker, who coined the term “womanist” in 1979 and whose subsequent writing, activism, and spiritual pursuits have given meaning and illustration to the womanist idea.13 At a time when nonracial, nongender, and non–class-based political concerns were not on the forefront of Black feminist discourse, Walker confronted and contested militarism, nuclear proliferation, environmental destruction, and other issues.14 At the same time, she followed a nontraditional spiritual course that empowered and spiritualized her politics and art.15
Other womanist authors and activists also evidence an ecowomanist perspective. Notably, Chikwenye Okonjo Ogunyemi brings two important issues to bear: first, she notes that womanist praxis concerns itself with environmentalism as part of an overall strategy for healing human society, and reconciling humans with nature and humans with the spirit world (which resides in, infuses, or speaks through nature).16 Using Osun of the Yoruba Orisha pantheon as a prototype of womanist praxis, Ogunyemi demonstrates that a certain degree of harmony and cooperation with nature is essential for the optimal functioning of society. Osun's roles as mother, mediator, independent businesswoman, and water deity illustrate the womanist penchant for working for social change and community well-being through diverse means simultaneously.
Second, Ogunyemi shows that food itself can be used as a means of social integration, diplomacy, and conflict resolution. In particular, she focuses on the role of palava sauce—a complex and tantalizing condiment comprised of numerous ingredients for which each person has her own “secret” recipe—in Nigerian social exchange. Quite literally, food can be used as a means of bringing people together who otherwise would not interact, for smoothing tensions when people disagree, and for facilitating celebration when victories of reconciliation have been achieved. Food is also known as a form of medicine among traditional healers, and the art of healing with food can be considered a lost art in industrialized society. In a society that requires healing on individual and collective levels, food itself can be considered a method for social change. This very accessible, ground-level, folk-oriented approach highlights the uniqueness of both womanism and ecowomanism. Furthermore, it intimates how veganism can serve as an expression of ecowomanist praxis.
I began toying with the idea of vegetarianism in 1980 when a beloved adult mentor gave me Kripalu Kitchen: A Natural Foods Cookbook & Nutritional Guide for my fifteenth birthday. The Kripalu Center is a well-known center for yoga practice and holistic living located in the Berkshires of Massachusetts. My friend, a Baha'i, yoga enthusiast, and vegetarian, visited Kripalu and saw fit to share the spirit of her experience with me, in whom I'm sure she detected a kindred spirit, even at such a young age.
Coincidentally (as if there are any coincidences), around this same time my father had instructed me to begin learning how to cook. Rather than being a dictate of gender-role enforcement, my father's injunction reflected his desire for me to become a fully autonomous and self-sufficient person with many life skills. Being a bookish girl, my response was to go to the public library and start checking out cookbooks. To this day, I still remember the Dewey decimal number for cookbooks: 641. I noticed immediately, when left to my own devices, that I was drawn to “international” cookbooks, particularly cookbooks of the global South and East, where recipes were rich with spices and vegetables, and included, more often than not, rice (which had always been one of my favorite foods). At the time, I did not make the connection that the preponderance of vegetables, fruits, and grains in the global South diet was partially a function of global class dynamics and the legacy of colonialism as well as the retention of a closer relationship to the earth and healthful eating practices in many of the societies in question. I simply liked the food. As I tried different vegetarian recipes and presented them to my family of seven (of which I was the eldest child), I found myself drawn deeper and deeper into vegetarianism. I was the first to spring stir-fry on my family (complete with my own made-up honey-mustard sauce), as well as tofu (usually in the form of tofu-spinach quiche, given the quiche craze of the early 1980s). These were greeted with great applause, as interesting departures from my mother's customary, albeit delicious way of cooking.
In 1982, as I headed off to Spelman College, where my mother and aunt had gone before me, I was presented with a gift from my mother. Somehow she'd found an institutional vegetarian cookbook that even had photos of Black cafeteria workers on the dust jacket. Proudly, I presented it to the chefs of the Alma Upshaw Dining Hall, who listened with at least feigned interest to my zealous spiel about vegetarianism. Unfortunately, I never witnessed the appearance of any of the book's offerings on the cafeteria line, and I began to wonder on what dimly lit shelf it might be gathering dust. My first attempt at vegetarian activism had come and gone, generating not even a ripple.
It wasn't much more than a year later when I was exposed to Alice Walker and womanism. Not only had my mother obtained a copy of In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose through one of her many book clubs, but my human sexuality teacher at Spelman had us read and analyze Walker's The Color Purple for our final project. I was captivated by the womanist idea—indeed, these, along with Barbara Smith's Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology, were my entrée into feminism—as well as the diverse ideas about, and expressions of, sexuality and activism that I encountered in these texts. But these seeds lay dormant a long time before sprouting.
It is perhaps ironic (or not) that a few years into my college career I myself fell off the vegetarian bandwagon for a while. In the spring of my sophomore year, as a young nineteen-year-old, I became pregnant and got married in short order. The man in my life, a Morehouse brother from a squarely upper-middle-class family, was not a vegetarian. To make matters worse, his mother was a really good cook. Wanting to fulfill my good wife fantasies, I expanded my cooking repertoire to include all manner of meats, fowl, and fish, often learning to prepare these dishes using “famous” recipes that my family had never consumed: stuffed teriyaki steak, chicken divan, chicken kiev, broiled salmon with lemon and dill, and grouper tempura were among my specialties. I even served lamb with mint sauce more than once, not thinking twice about, or even being aware of, the conditions in which lambs are raised for consumption. This was well before I'd ever heard of veganism or animal rights, although I did purchase organic meats as soon as our local grocery store—Big Star, at the time—began to offer them.
Two years into this situation, aged twenty-one, I had a second child. It was my senior year when I got pregnant, the fall of my first year of grad school when I gave birth. I'd considered raising my children as vegetarians but didn't do so initially. It took a divorce after five years of marriage and my welcomed entry into single-parenthood to return to my preferred vegetarian diet. At this time, I usually cooked vegetarian food for myself and my kids, only occasionally caving into their desires for meat-based foods. But we were all big dairy eaters! I loved cheese (perhaps because my father is a Wisconsinite and his sister sent us big cheese baskets filled with cheddar and gouda every Christmas) and eggs (perhaps because my family ate scrambled eggs, often with ham and peppers, almost every Saturday morning, right along with oil-recipe biscuits). Also, for that lean period when I was a graduate student and single mom, WIC (the federal Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children) provided us with lots of milk and eggs! When money was short, eggs or cereal and milk were a meal. Of course, now I realize the relationship between WIC and farming subsidies, but at the time it was a survival mechanism.
Nevertheless, I became radicalized around environmental issues during that single-parent, graduate-school period. I read books such as Jeremy Rifkin's The Green Lifestyle Handbook and Anita Roddick's Body and Soul: Profits with Principles. I subscribed to magazines like the Utne Reader, hearkening back to when I used to read Mother Earth News religiously at the public library when I was a teenager. I joined a health-food co-op in Philadelphia, where I was living, and I started buying recycled and green products like Seventh Generation, not to mention recycling my family's waste to the greatest extent possible. In the circles where I ran, I frequently came across animal rights and vegetarian tracts, and I shared this information with my kids. Occasionally, they grew weary of all the gory animal-cruelty tales, toxic-food rhetoric, and mom-based proselytizing, insisting that they weren't going to give up their McDonald's Happy Meals and frozen KidCuisines no matter what I said. I swore to them that they would both be vegetarians by the time they were twenty-five. That remains to be seen!
Strangely enough, I never really processed what veganism was until my very first job interview at Antioch College. Considered one of America's “radical” colleges, Antioch offered a vegan food option at all events at which food was served. I was intrigued and asked a few students about veganism. Even though, at that time, I had no plan to give up cheese, I listened with great interest as another seed was planted in my mind.
I eventually took my first job in Georgia and entered a ten-year phase during which I cycled in and out of vegetarianism. To begin with, the lure of southern food (which I had missed up north), announced by the omnipresent and wafting scent of barbecue, tempted me back into meat-eating. Barbecue chicken was standard, macaroni and cheese was gold, collard greens were the stuff of life (and rarely did they come without pork). Various cakes and pies, from red velvet to sweet potato, were like dying and going to heaven. So, I confess, I did inhale. Then I'd find my way back to vegetarianism after a period of self-reproach, feel sanctified, and slip again. Jokingly, I used to refer to myself as “the Jimmy Swaggart of vegetarians.”
Eventually, I partnered with another nonvegetarian, and even though she was able to countenance my vegetarianism for a while, after a period of time she and the kids collectively clamored for the traditional meat-and-three diet. As chief shopper and cook, I half-heartedly complied, having neither the time nor energy to prepare separate meals for myself. Because at the time I still found the taste of meat foods appealing—particularly if they were slathered in some sort of sauce like barbecue, tandoori, or curry—my own palate served as no deterrent to a carnivorous practice. Also, since I love the creativity of cooking, I was able to enjoy the preparation of meat as much as the preparation of vegetables and fruits. I can no longer claim this to be true.
I markedly remember one conversation my partner and I had over dinner with two of our friends who were hardcore vegetarians. We were arguing the merits of vegetarianism and one of the friends said, “To tell the truth, I'm even tempted to become a vegan, but I just don't know if I could hack it.” Because, on the inside, I still very much wanted to engage in a consistent vegetarian practice, her statement tugged at my heart. I remember thinking, If I ever go back to vegetarianism, I'm going to check into veganism.
Long story short, I departed from that relationship and breathed a sigh of relief that I could now construct the dietary lifestyle of my choice without impediments. An interesting period ensued during which I craved fish (because my former partner detested it and wouldn't allow it in the house) and onions (for the same reason). Although I had given up beef long before, I gradually parted ways with pork and chicken, finally giving up fish right around the time I joined forces with my current partner. A vegetarian when we met, he became vegan shortly thereafter, ultimately incorporating raw-food practices, and inspired and fortified me to do the same. In his library was a wealth of information about nutrition and the body, with which I found myself fascinated if not periodically overwhelmed by.
What is interesting is that, in many respects, I discovered that turning vegan was what I'd really wanted to do all along but for whatever reason couldn't manage. Social pressure, care-taking responsibilities, and even the advertising industry had all played a role in my self-denial around veganism. It felt good and right now to be aligned with someone whose food-related beliefs and desires were similar to my own and whose practices more closely reflected those beliefs and desires, instigating me to self-actualize.
My veganism, and now raw foodism, are also closely aligned with my womanism and, in particular, womanism as an expression of social-change praxis. Womanism is, for me, an articulation of everyday-women-folklove-and-social-change expressed in political and academic terms. As a discourse, it's a bridge between what everyday people feel, think, and do and what academic folk feel the need to codify and philosophize about. As a womanist, I exist in both worlds—the everyday and the academic (as if any kind of split is really possible)—and what I like about womanism is that it “doesn't mind.” I don't feel split in womanism, and thus I can put my energy on the real problem at hand, namely, making the world a better place for folk, which includes healing people and the earth as well as realizing the spirituality of everything and spiritualizing human experience. The ungrammatical folksiness with which I speak here—the shift in voice—is intentional; it's meant to reflect the creativity of the human heart when it's faced with terrible problems, unwell people, frustrated spirits, and limited or unreliable resources. Ultimately, the best resource in these situations is one's self, a.k.a inner resources. Joining with like-minded and like-hearted others—not just women, but everybody, from all walks of life—is what makes womanism what it is.
As I once uttered in a dream, “Womanism is like a neighborhood, with everybody coming together for a common purpose.” In this neighborhood, some people, like myself, are vegans because they want to interrupt certain processes perceived to be destructive—human harming, animal hurting, earth disrupting, and spirit negating—such as factory farming and animal cruelty, gross disparities in access to food and food distribution around the world, exploitation of people living on subsistence incomes, risks in the medical-care industry, and, in general, creating artificial distance between humans and the earth in their symbiotic and spiritual relationship. Veganism is a way of keeping the interior of the body clean so that it doesn't waste valuable energy on coping with toxicity—energy that can be applied to other, non–self-oriented pursuits. It is an embodiment of the axiom “Live simply so that others may simply live.” Veganism is also a way of living and a way of eating that can make good nutrition and plentiful food available to all people on earth, even as the planet's population grows exponentially. Veganism, especially raw foodism, is also a mode of eating that works well when extremely simple living is desired or required. Thus, a vegan practice is both symbolic and practical, and it is an embodiment of activist loving.
I have been a vegan now for three years (it will be longer by the time this chapter is published). My vegan and raw-food practices have caused me to appreciate the elegance of nature, the splendor of creation, and the pure pleasure inherent in the earth. They have also relieved me of the illusion that processing by humans is always necessary for “a better life.” Veganism—and I'm no extremist, being gentle with myself and others—has filtered into and supported my appreciation for “living simply” more generally, compelling me to reduce my material possessions significantly, downsize to a more compact living space, and take on other intentional practices that prepare me for living in a more balanced and sustainable way with a more populated and interconnected global human society. Contrary to what others looking in might perceive, all this actually feels really good. I don't miss my former way of eating or living, and while I respect where everyone is on their own journey, I now revel wholeheartedly in my own.