Let’s Talk About Sarah Kramer: A Love Letter
I’ll be honest. It’s hard to justify spending time writing about anything right now but our worsening geopolitical landscape, it is that pressing and front burner in terms of importance. Everything else feels like trying to arrange flowers in a windstorm: Pointless, an exercise in futility. It’s good to talk about something other than greedy, cruel monsters once in a while, though, and that’s what I aim to do because I don’t know about you, but I really need a break.
Let’s talk about Sarah Kramer instead. She’s kind of the antithesis of Trump-Musk and all they represent if there ever was one such being and not just because she’s a Canadian and a vegan, though that will take you pretty far. I don’t know Sarah personally, though we have messaged before and she’s lovely. It’s just that she’s dying from an aggressive form of brain cancer and I feel like what she means to so many of us needs to be said.
First a little background: Beginning in 1999, Sarah wrote cookbooks, most famously the ‘50s-style inspired, puntastically titled How it All Vegan, The Garden of Vegan (both co-authored with her friend Tanya Barnard) as well as La Dolce Vegan on her own. What was different about these cookbooks was…pretty much everything. As someone who went vegan in 1995 and has a pretty good understanding of its cultural evolution over the past 30 years, I can tell you that Sarah’s books were a key part of the second wave of veganism that propelled us into the modern era.
When I went vegan, veganism was shackled to a stubbornly beige association with hippies, beansprouts and communes, if it was known at all. Maybe cults. It was almost always mispronounced. Those of us on the inside and around Sarah’s age, though, knew that the vegan ethic was ubiquitous in the punk, straight edge and scrappy eco-activist scenes of the 1990s, a cornerstone. With the internet — and not only increased access to news and information, but also message boards, personal profiles, bloggers, recipes, websites and more — the critical “whys” and “hows” of veganism spread in ways that we could only dream about when we were wheatpasting our anti-fur flyers up on telephone poles, trying to find a space for our protest leaflets up on bulletin boards and handing out pamphlets at train stations.
Then came How it All Vegan and it was like a window in a stuffy room finally got lifted and finally, there was movement. A breath of fresh, as I like to say. I feel like Sarah’s books were an essential leavener to the vegan movement, the way that sparkling water can add lift and buoyancy to otherwise heavy baked goods. She and her books greeted a new, suddenly curious audience with a warm hello and were a key part of veganism 2.0: Friendly, spirited, contemporary but infused with a love of kitschy midcentury design, conversational in tone, and shot through with a “we got this” ethic from the authors’ time in the punk trenches. It managed to be all those things but also unpretentious and funny. (With recipes like “Make Ya Go Bran Muffins,” this wasn’t a cookbook that took itself too seriously.)
As a cultural zeitgeist, How it All Vegan meant veganism either debuted or was finally set free from its association with hippie culture and their books with bad black-and-white photography, a recipe for pinto beans, random midwifery tips and 47 uses for baking powder. Cannily, the authors and publisher Arsenal Pulp Press integrated this “weird, new diet” with classic ’50s imagery throughout and put their tatted-up and pierced authors on the cover with their big, vibrant smiles and colorful dresses. As someone who started by making and selling vegan zines back in the day as an ’80s and ’90s girl on the scene, Sarah’s DIY spirit wove an unmistakable through-line to her cookbook oeuvre.
How fucking brilliant. I think they were just being themselves but tying the books stylistically to the 1950s (even if it was by way of the punk and rockabilly scene, no one needed to know that and those of us who did weren’t bothered by it) probably helped parents and grandparents of burgeoning herbivores put their guard down a little. It didn’t hurt that Sarah’s hilarious, exuberant spirit was also perfect for helping the public get over their apprehension and defensiveness about the message.
The recipes were approachable, simple and easy to make, affordable and reliable. Full of recognizable, pantry staple ingredients, imagine that. Damn, though, if the books didn’t cover every last thing from a glossary of animal-based ingredients before those were apps for that, time management tips for the kitchen and 45 uses for salt, as there was in La Dolce Vegan. (Okay, didn’t I just make fun of the commune folks for something similar? Yes, I did. There is room for all good things and I think Sarah’s probably at least 18% hippie.) The point of this is to not worship anyone — I don’t think Sarah would have that — but to put Ms. Kramer in her proper place in the Pantheon.
When we don’t know our history, especially at a time when those in power are hacking away at it and working hard to erase it, we also don’t know our current moment and how we got here. We can think, for example, that some tech bros in shiny Silicon Valley laboratories invented modern-day veganism with venture capitalist funds.
That ain’t the case and I am here to remind you.
Sarah, I do not know you personally, but you are one of the good ones and maybe that is all that matters at the end of the day. You did a lot of heavy lifting while pirouetting around like a fabulous kitchen sprite. You did so much good for the planet, for the animals, for our society and you were yourself when you did it. You will not be forgotten and you have made such a difference. Thank you.
Last: If you’d like to help offset some of the costs of her palliative care and allow Sarah’s partner to spend the last weeks of Sarah’s life with her in comfort and with fewer worries, I would so appreciate that and I am sure they would as well.
Damn, well, I’m crying again.
Here is their fundraiser again. Your contributions and sharing mean so much.
Thank you, too.
Marla Rose is cofounder of VeganStreet.com.
