And then, occasionally, when [Blue, the horse] came up for apples, or I took apples to him, he looked at me. It was a look so piercing, so full of grief, a look so human, I almost laughed (I felt too sad to cry) to think there are people who do not know that animals suffer. People like me who have forgotten, and daily forget, all that animals try to tell us. "Everything you do to us will happen to you; we are your teachers, as you are ours. We are one lesson" is essentially it, I think. There are those who never once have considered animals' rights: those who have been taught that animals actually want to be used and abused by us, as small children "love" to be frightened, or women "love to be mutilated and raped”.... They are the great-grandchildren of those who honestly thought, because someone taught them this: "women can't think" and "niggers can't faint." But most disturbing of all, in Blue's large brown eyes was a new look, more painful than the look of despair: the look of disgust with human beings, with life; the look of hatred. And it was odd what the look of hatred did. It gave him, for the first time, the look of a beast. And what that meant was that he had put up a barrier within to protect himself from further violence; all the apples in the world wouldn't change that fact.
And so Blue remained, a beautiful part of our landscape, very peaceful to look at from the window, white against the grass. Once a friend came to visit and said, looking out on the soothing view: "And it would have to be a white horse; the very image of freedom." And I thought, yes, the animals are forced to become for us merely "images" of what they once so beautifully expressed. And we are used to drinking milk from containers showing "contented" cows, whose real lives we want to hear nothing about, eating eggs and drumsticks from "happy" hens, and munching hamburgers advertised by bulls of integrity who seem to command their fate. As we talked of freedom and justice one day for all, we sat down to steaks. I am eating misery, I thought, as I took the first bite. And spit it out.
~Alice Walker, "I am Blue?" 1986
During my research in college on connecting women's studies to animal welfare/animal rights, I came across this short writing by Alice Walker; she has been one of my favorite authors since I was in high school. The way she connects her life to her surroundings - whether they be humans, animals, or things in nature, she is always on a higher level of understanding of them and the way life is connected, than what most people feel on a daily basis. Her connectedness to the world draws me into her writing - she says things people don't say in polite conversation, without being crude or blunt about it. This is quite possibly my favorite piece by her.
