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In this show, we feature an exclusive interview with writer and boom operator Paradox Delilah on her first self-published book, The Race, which draws on concepts of the modern dairy industry and the insidious ways we are distracted from its cruelties. We also listen to an encore interview of Aph Ko on speciesism as an extension of white supremacy.
Vegan Writer Paradox Delilah on Inspirations For Her Book, The Race
Paradox Delilah is an Australian-Canadian writer self-published her first novel, The Race, in November 2019. Her day job as a boom operator and sound assistant had her working on production sets from 2009 to present time. She also dabbled in film-making herself as the director, writer, and producer in her own short-film The Owls Are Not What They Seem, which had taken third place finalist at the 2017 Twin Peaks Festival Short Film Contest.
The Race draws allegory to the cruelty of the dairy industry by putting humans into the place that animals are currently suffering in our reality. It is a science fiction novel that appeals to our compassion to fellow humans and encourages readers to apply this same compassion to non-human animals as well. Paradox describes her novel as a mix of Mad Max: Fury Road, The Matrix, and The Book of the Unnamed Midwife. Aliens are farming humans and keeping the human population complacent by distracting them with an endless race across the desert. Readers follow the perspectives throughout separate journeys of an adult woman and a young girl who both gain awareness of their reality as commodities to these aliens, and they each must decide what lengths they would be willing to to secure their freedom from their circumstances.
During our interview of Paradox Delilah, we ask her about her reasons for having become vegan, what inspired her to write The Race and on social injustices, and the takeaway she wants for readers of The Race.
Aph Ko: Spotlighting Black Vegans and the Interconnectedness of Racism and Speciesism
Aph Ko is the founder of Black Vegans Rock, a website that showcases everyday Black vegans in various fields. By spotlighting Black vegans, the website pushes back against the exclusion and erasure Black activists often face in vegan communities and other activist spaces.
Aph is also a founding collective member of the North American Association for Critical Animal Studies, a biennial conference for anti-speciesist research in human-animal relations.
Aph Ko’s Racism as Zoological Witchcraft: A Guide to Getting Out
In this show, Aph joins us to discuss her groundbreaking new book, Racism as Zoological Witchcraft: A Guide to Getting Out, published in October 2019.
In this book, she explores how oppression of animals is an extension of white supremacy, partially through an in-depth analysis of Jordan Peele’s 2017 film Get Out. One of the theories Aph puts forth is that white supremacist notions of animality and race are manifested through the consumption of flesh, and that racism and speciesism are so inextricably linked that current movements for anti-racism and animal rights are incomplete when left disconnected from each other.
“[V]eganism isn’t just about kicking a meat-eating habit and getting some veggies into your diet. It’s a powerful rejection of a racist food system and a racist, cannibalistic politics that characterizes animals and nonwhite people as disposable and consumable. This is why anti-racist theory matters in our efforts to free animals. The goal isn’t just to get people to replace chicken with tofu (although that’s a great start). The goal is to get the public to understand why animals matter on a political and ethical level. The goal is to reveal how the current power structure relies upon anti-Black and anti-animal ideologies to strengthen itself.”
excerpt from Racism as Zoological Witchcraft: A Guide to Getting Out, by Aph Ko
Show produced by Leah Thompson, with web content written by Asami Hitohara