Understanding Vegans by Andre Huber

Author Interview

Welcome to the eighteenth in a series of interviews with authors who write books about animal rights and related matters. Andre Huber describes himself as an “educator and writer with a secret agenda: he wants you to go vegan (unless you are stranded on a deserted island with a pig).” He has been a vegan for more than a decade. A free digital copy of Understanding Vegans is available here.

How did you become a vegan? 

Like most people, I grew up eating meat and consuming animal-derived products. My youth was a textbook example of the cognitive dissonance most of us are raised with: I had pets, I loved animals and would have never ever wanted to hurt one but didn’t truly allow myself to make the connection and considered vegetarians as people you make fun of at best. It was in my mid-twenties when I read Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, which raised some interest in learning more about the foods that we eat. Around the same time, they showed some documentaries on TV dealing with food production, which inevitably also included footage of animal (factory-) farming.

For the first time, I started to ask myself questions about ethics and questioned whether my behavior was in line with my values. What followed was the typical rabbit hole of documentaries, books and online resources, which made me go vegan within a matter of weeks. I’ve never looked back since. You could say that books opened my eyes, they made me understand intellectually, but it took moving images of various documentaries to drive home the message from an emotional perspective. Looking into the eyes of a suffering animal that fears for its life is an extremely sobering experience.

What prompted you to write Understanding Vegans? 

I always enjoyed writing and wanted to find a more active role in my activism. Although the world has changed quite a bit over the last decade and veganism is no longer such a foreign concept, I realize that we are still lightyears away from people really understanding the underlying problems that we as vegans protest against.

One of the most frustrating aspects for me was often that people would ask me why I am a vegan, but I felt that it was neither the right place nor the right time to really dive into such a discussion. Nobody wants to ruin the mood of a party by starting to discuss the cruelties of factory farming and, at the same time, we don’t do the issue justice if we reduce it to one or two sentences. So, while writing this book, I was imagining this scenario of me being able to reach into my bag, pull out a copy of my book and say “Here! Read this! This will tell you everything you need to know”.

What do you seek to accomplish with your book? 

Ultimately, the answer to this question lies in the title of the book. I hope that those who have read Understanding Vegans will feel understanding for our cause and position. I don’t expect that every reader will become vegan the day after, but I think if more people at least can understand our position and respect it without being triggered every time they read the word “vegan” in the papers, it would already help our cause a great deal. Because most of the arguments you hear and read against veganism in the comment sections really seem to be rooted in a lack of knowledge and understanding.

There seems to be very little well-informed debating going on, it’s mainly vegans versus “why do vegans have to call their fake food ‘sausage’ if they don’t want to eat meat”. Therefore, I also wanted to make sure that my book is available to anyone who wants to read it. I make the book freely available as a PDF download on my Instagram account. I’m selling only the printed hardcopy and formatted e-book version at this point to cover my expenses for printing and shipping.

What makes Understanding Vegans different from other books about this subject? 

I believe that if you already are a vegan or know a lot about animal rights activism, you probably will find many books on this topic repetitive to some degree, while at the same time if you don’t know much about the topic, almost every book can be incredibly insightful.

I tried to write Understanding Vegans as approachable as possible, in a conversational tone, humorous, but straight to the point, no sugarcoating. I want the readers not only to understand the motivations why we are vegan, but also share how we oftentimes feel as individuals in a non-vegan world, the frustrations which arguably inform some of our behaviors and our perception by society.

I hope the reader gets a 360° view of veganism in one digestible read. It certainly is not an in-depth dealing with the animal rights situation in a specific country, but rather a starting point that should make you hungry for more, should you want to pick up more books or watch some documentaries, etc.

Is it easier to be vegan today in comparison to when you became one? What do you think veganism will be like in ten years from now?

Easier in the sense of more comfortable—absolutely. The sheer availability of vegan products in supermarkets and vegan options in restaurants has increased tremendously. Ten to fifteen years ago, I could have never expected to walk into a supermarket and find a shampoo with a vegan certification or an entire section of plant-based milk alternatives. But this made life mainly more convenient, I’m not so sure if it really changed a great deal in terms of our “daily struggles”, like having to explain your needs at a restaurant, dealing with judgement, not being understood by peers, feeling excluded on many occasions, being ridiculed, etc.

Will this improve over the next 10 years? I want to believe so. I think the next generation has already grown up with a much different reality than I did, so I’m counting on that. I also think that the inevitable climate crisis will help our cause in the long run. But I’m not too optimistic that 10 years is enough time to expect that we will flip the world upside down. I think we’re in for a marathon, not a sprint.

A free digital copy of Understanding Vegans is available here.