Sistah Vegan needs your help!

(Source: http://www.steinerbooks.org/images/large/9781590561454.jpg)

I need a place to host my book release party for free. Does anyone know of someone who would be willing to donate their space for the Sistah Vegan book release? I’m looking at the month of March 2010? Berkeley, Oakland, or San Francisco would be much appreciated. It would actually be nice to have 3 or 4 release venues for the month of March: One in Berkeley, one in Oakland, 2 in San Francisco. If anyone has connections to Ella Baker Center, Guerilla Cafe, Manzanita (Emeryville), Cafe Gratitude (San Francisco or Berkeley), Marcus Books (Oakland), Museum of the African Diaspora (San Francisco) or Pegasus Books, let me know.

Venues I’d be open to: churches, restaurants, non-profit organizations, book stores, anything else you can think of that I couldn’t. I would probably do a reading of a book chapter from the project, talk about it, answer questions, then have a book signing. I was also thinking that because I am a new author and no one knows who I am, maybe a well-known food-justice related person(s) could introduce me. They don’t necessarily have to be a food or health activist. I’m appreciative of someone who is working around the issues of empowering people of color or who writes about people of color. If anyone knows someone who is “famous” and in the East Bay area, that would be cool. I would prefer these well-known people to introduce me, to be people of color, simply because I do feel that the spotlight on veganism/vegetarianism, as well as organic/local, still shines on the white middle class USAmerican experience and thoughts. It would be nice to shift the center to the perspective of racialized non-white minorities.

Also, who would like to help with PR for their area and possibly hosting their own local release party? I would love to have book release parties throughout the USA, but not sure how to begin to make this possible. I can make a flyer that can be printed out. I’m thinking that the contributors who would want to, could potentially host their own parties by reading their chapters from the book? Not sure what people think about this.

I’m simply super psyched about seeing this book finally come out in print and that it appears to be the first book that looks at health, food, society, and identity through the lens of the African American female vegan experience. As a matter of fact, this is the first and only book in the USA that consciously explores how being racialized as “black” and identifying as a “female” affects one’s perception and praxis of veganism. No other book in the USA has ever been written that even suggests the unique ways in which racialization + gender experience contribute to how one enters their practice of veganism, period.

The book is less than 2 months away from being released, so there is a lot of work to do. Let me know if you’d like to get on board with this publicity project! The book is at: http://www.lanternbooks.com/detail.html?id=9781590561454