I rented Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals from the library, at a time in my life when I was searching inwards and exploring my beliefs. I would listen to the audiobook as I drove, and so it was a gradual experience that took place over a month.
My experience listening to this book opened my eyes to something which I had subconsciously known about myself all along but had not yet acknowledged. I learned about what it means to eat animals in our industrialized, capitalistic world, and how eating meat is not intrinsically bad, but circumstantially bad when it entails the suffering of animals, the health and disparity of humans, and environmental destruction for the planet.
This book opened my eyes to a world outside of my own, and to a conscious awareness of others, that helped me to think in different ways, and believe in a moral cause. I became a vegetarian in 2017, and have centered my academic research on meat and animal studies.
– Taylin Nelson (Ph.D. Student)
