Fashionable Resistance and Bryant Terry Earrings: The Art of Critical Thinking and Change-Making

A few months ago, I let my fans know that for a future Sistah Vegan endeavor, I will be collaborating with artists and designers to make a new line of Sistah Vegan “approved” jewelry called “Fashionable Resistance”. This line will showcase the activists and scholars who have been influential for my scholarship and activism. Back in the Fall of 2014, I had written that I would love to showcase folk such as pattrice jones, Angela Davis, Bryant Terry, DJ Cavem, Lauren Ornelas (Food Empowerment Project), Octavia Butler (vegan by the way) and Queen Afua (with proper permission from them of course).

The kick-off event has now arrived for the Sistah Vegan Project’s Fashionable Resistance. Chef Bryant Terry is the first person to be part of our new line and I couldn’t be more thrilled. Charisma Eclectic helped with the design and making the earrings. Author of groundbreaking vegan cookbooks such as Vegan Soul Kitchen, The Inspired Vegan, and Afro-Vegan, Terry’s work has been a significant influence on the Sistah Vegan Project’s ‘race-conscious’ approach to analyzing vegan praxis in the USA.

I attended his 2009 book release party at San Francisco’s Museum of the African Diaspora. He gave a thought-provoking speech in which he spoke about his journey to producing his first solo book project. While giving the talk, the projector was stuck on showing the image of a watermelon on the wall. Terry began talking about how ‘perfect’ it was that the projector was stuck on showing the watermelon. He shared with us that he had never had a taste of watermelon until he was a teenager. Why? Because of the negative stereotypes of Black people eating watermelons, his parents wanted to protect him from the pain of living in a racist and anti-Black USA society as a Black male. Food objects such as watermelon that should be pleasurable, became a taboo to consume because of its laden socio-historical connotation with Blacks as ‘buffoons’ within the white racist imagination/narrative. Terry’s story helped to strengthen the Sistah Vegan Project’s ongoing work: analyzing and showing that how individuals experience ‘cruelty-free’ vegan food objects (such as watermelons) is deeply impacted by the on-going cruelty of systemic racism.

6 years later, Terry’s work continues to engage both vegan culinary arts and critical race consciousness around the needs of communities of color, such as fighting environmental racism and acknowledging that we live in a militarized police state in which racial profiling and anti-Black ideologies rule supreme.

Bryant Terry earrings are available for order, on demand, for $25.00 (including mailing within USA) by sending an online PayPal payment to the address breezeharper at gmail dot com. (Unfortunately, WordPress won’t allow me to put a custom-made Paypal earrings button on the site. Sorry, but I hope that in the near future I will have an Etsy shoppe (or similar) up for the Fashionable Resistance line.)

Profits go directly to keeping the Sistah Vegan Project afloat. Profits and donations continue to make projects prossible– such as the past April 2015 Vegan Praxis of Black Lives Matter online conference and my latest book project. To find out more about these projects, please go here.