On this day in vegan history · February 21, 1977
Jonathan Safran Foer Is Born
A novelist who couldn't decide what to feed his newborn son turned that indecision into one of the most widely read cases against factory farming in America.
The facts
- Born
- February 21, 1977, in Washington, D.C.
- Book
- Eating Animals, published 2009 by Little, Brown and Company
- Reception
- A New York Times best-seller
Jonathan Safran Foer was born on February 21, 1977, in Washington, D.C. He made his name as a novelist in his twenties, then turned to nonfiction when he became a father and could not settle a simple question: what should his son eat? That question became Eating Animals, published in 2009, a dense investigation into industrial animal agriculture that reached readers a strident vegan pamphlet never could. It became a New York Times bestseller and pulled factory farming into ordinary literary conversation, not just activist circles.
In their words
The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.
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an urgency because I would have to make decisions on his behalf
Jonathan Safran Foer, describing what the birth of his first child inspired, quoted on Wikipedia
Source: Wikipedia
Why it still matters
Eating Animals put the case against factory farming in front of readers who would never pick up an activist tract, using a novelist's ordinary, personal dilemma as the way in. It remains one of the clearest reminders that the fight to change how people eat is often won book club by book club, not just protest by protest.
Sources
This history is still being written.
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