Elevate Difference

Reviews by Charlotte Malerich

Charlotte Malerich

Charlotte Malerich writes and works near the District of Columbia. She lives with one human, one fire-bellied newt, and three rescued rabbits who would like you to go vegan. Visit her online at csmalerich.wordpress.com.

Fear of the Animal Planet: The Hidden History of Animal Resistance

You may already know (and I hope you do) that zoos and circuses aren't good places for animals. But how do we know? Jason Hribal's Fear of an Animal Planet argues that we only need listen to what the animals themselves are telling us. He fills the pages with story after story of animals who "misbehave": who escape, who refuse to perform and reproduce, who attack (and often kill) human handlers.

Black Bloc, White Riot: Anti-Globalization and the Genealogy of Dissent

My fascination with the anti-globalization movement, like my own baby steps into activism, is a late bloomer. I came of age when my peers were shutting down Seattle. I was reading Marx for the first time in college when IMF protestors took to the streets in DC. Yet throughout my extended adolescence, radical politics was background noise. I never paused to find out why globalization made people so angry. Like a lot of people growing up white and middle class, militancy was excessive and embarrassing.

Vegan Freak: Being Vegan in a Non-Vegan World

Wherever one falls on the meat-eater to vegan continuum, you need to make the Torres duo your truth-speaking, profanity-spewing, tough-loving pals. They will move you closer to ethical veganism. For the already-vegan, Bob and Jenna offer the rationale and the moral support to stay that way. For four years, these wacky Ph.D.s have provided social commentary and intellectual critique to and for vegans through their podcast, blog, online forum and publications.

Want to Start a Revolution?: Radical Women in the Black Freedom Struggle

Can African American liberation be understood without easy binaries: nonviolent civil disobedience vs. armed self-defense, integration vs. Black nationalism, MLK vs. Malcolm X? Can the history of feminism be written without effacing the contributions of Black feminists and other people of color? As Want to Start a Revolution? shows, foregrounding the work of women in Black liberation immediately problematizes these simple classifications.

South Koreans in the Debt Crisis: The Creation of a Neoliberal Welfare Society

Having recently read Marxist scholar David Harvey's A Brief History of Neoliberalism, I was eager to dig into Jesook Song's explanation of how her own nation became a case study for the neoliberal state. Amid a worldwide economic crisis, now seems a fine time to explore the assumptions underpinning global capitalism.

Neither Fugitive nor Free: Atlantic Slavery, Freedom Suits, and the Legal Culture of Travel

In this superb book, Edlie Wong analyzes the territorialization of freedom and slavery in the antebellum Atlantic.

Plunt

From the get-go, Plunt prejudiced me in their favor. They dub themselves "Montreal indie pop punk"—all promising adjectives, even if "Montreal" isn't really an adjective, but a beautiful city filled with friendly people. Then the group adds adorable cover art, bilingual credits, and band photograph that's the very opposite of a glamour shot. Look, they didn't even comb their hair!

Jupiter

I don't dance. At least not well. So an evening of bopping or grinding or shaking (or whatever the kids are into these days) isn't my scene. But that's no excuse to excise whole genres from my potential music library, and more electronic acts are creeping in by the day.

No Girls in the Clubhouse: The Exclusion of Women from Baseball

The premise of No Girls in the Clubhouse is that baseball could be successfully gender-integrated at all levels with no disadvantage to either side, but social expectations—not biological deficiency—exclude women from full participation in the sport. Feminists won't be surprised to learn how, in anthropologist Marilyn Cohen's analysis, the historical achievements of female baseball players have been obscured.

Sea Sew

Ah, the curse of cuteness. Lisa Hannigan must know it better than many.

Nocturnal Drifter

"I consider all of the arts to be interconnected," writes Jessie Kilguss, who began a career as a film actor before shifting media to become a singer.
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