Elevate Difference

Reviews by Kelly Palka Gallagher

Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs and Wear Cows: An Introduction to Carnism

I will say it, here and now: I eat meat. Now that I have announced that, I fear that Melanie Joy will fly through my window to tell me how the meat industry recapitulates Nazism. Okay, I don’t really. But you catch my drift: this woman is serious. As a person with very close vegetarian friends, and who has also purchased, prepared, eaten, and enjoyed seitan, quorn, and tofu, I would say that I have a decent understanding of vegetarianism without actually practicing it. I am not convinced, however, that Joy’s book offers much that is new to the vegetarian rhetoric.

That's Why We Don't Eat Animals: A Book About Vegans, Vegetarians, and All Living Things

If you are planning on raising a vegetarian child who will be well-prepared to explain his or her beliefs to inquiring peers, teachers, and friends’ parents, That's Why We Don't Eat Animals is a great start. Did you know that turkeys blush? Or that newborn quail start walking the moment they are hatched from their eggs?

One Summer in New Paltz: A Cautionary Tale

Weddings always tug at my heartstrings, but there is nothing quite as heartwarming as hearing people sing in the streets. The Whos in Whoville taught me that. The name New Paltz may ring a bell. It is a small college town in the mid-Hudson Valley of New York State that gained national attention in 2004 when the town’s twenty-six-year-old mayor, Jason West, married two dozen same-sex couples, an idea that was the result of a conversation between West and a local same-sex couple during a house painting project.

I’m Still Standing: From Captive U.S. Soldier to Free Citizen—My Journey Home

I was working in my college dining hall when I first caught wind of Jessica Lynch’s capture back in 2003. As I scraped steam trays, I compared our situations. She is a brave soldier somewhere in the sands of Iraq. I am a pansy who spent her days in purgatorial peace in the tundra of upstate New York. I didn’t know—many people didn’t know—that five other soldiers, including Shoshana Johnson, the first African-American female prisoner of war, were also being held.

Tehran Has No More Pomegranates

Massoud Bakshim’s Tehran Has No More Pomegranates identifies itself as “a musical, historical, comedy, docu-drama, love story, experimental film.” Attempts to classify the film—as a postmodern visual stew, as a sarcastic video collage-portrait, as a half-tribute-half-roast—don’t quite encapsulate the its nuances.

make/shift: feminisms in motion (Issue 6)

Make/Shift aims to thrust the ignored populations into the greater recognition. Native Americans living in urban settings rather than rural reservations tend to be invisible in our nation’s consciousness. Society shies away from the combination of disability and sexuality, and when it comes to women’s prisons, many question the validity of empowerment through peer education health programs.