Melanie Joy

Highly recommended for anyone who wants to be a more mindful agent for bringing the light of conscious living to everything from personal relationships to the predominant culture in which we live.”

“In this insightful and engaging book, Melanie Joy offers wisdom, comfort, and advice for any vegan or vegetarian who’s ever felt misunderstood by meat eaters and for any meat eater who’s ever felt confounded by vegans or vegetarians. This book can show you the way beyond your beliefs, so you can relate and communicate with clarity and compassion.

“Navigating relationships can be hard, particularly for new vegans trying to figure out how to relate to their non-vegan friends and family. Dr. Joy’s book provides excellent guidance to help with these issues and provides vegans and others with the tools they need for social success.”

—DAVE SIMON, Esq., author of Meatonomics

This book is, please excuse me, a joy to read. I cannot imagine anyone reading this without an “aha” moment, and one for the good."

—JEFFREY MOUSSAIEFF MASSON, PhD, author of When Elephants Weep and other books

For the vegans and vegetarians whose caring and commitment is a gift to the planet; I hope this book gives back to you some of what you give to the world

I had known her brilliant work on the psychology of carnism and admired her strategic way of thinking about the culture of eating animals. She took a burgeoning social justice movement and packaged it into a psychologically compelling conversation

At the time, I was married to a man I had deeply loved for many years, but had increasingly grown apart from. When my husband and I met, I ate steak and chicken with abandon, and proudly thought of myself as an All American Meat Eater, so when I began to see the world—animal foods—differently, we drifted. It wasn’t anyone’s fault, but we’d just lost the ability to see the world through each other’s eyes.

She never said this was her goal, of course, but this is what she did: she helped me evolve as a human being, skillfully guiding me to be more respectful and loving, more patient and humble, and more authentic in relationships of all kinds

So, just because my veganism is foundational for me doesn’t mean I can only be around other vegans. To the contrary, I think being closely involved with people who think differently than me is invigorating. It teaches me to be clear, to remain open, and to constantly stay curious. And it makes me love someone even more when one of us takes steps to better understand the other, to close the gap between “what I believe” and “what you believe.” Love, it seems, is beyond “beliefs.”

But she bit her tongue, as always. She didn’t know what to say that wouldn’t make her look like the “hysteric,” the “extremist,” which was how her family saw her. If she pointed out that the jokes weren’t funny, she’d be told that she had no sense of humor, that she needed to lighten up. If she forced herself to laugh along with the others, she’d be betraying her values, reinforcing the very attitudes that support eating animals.