North Stars of Emancipation: California’s Diverse Food and Farming Movements in Times of Racial Reckoning, out July 14th on MIT Press. You can find the book here, and preorder it wherever you buy books from!
The book describes a shift in recent decades of US food movement politics – driven by the greater inclusion and influence of people of color – towards more radical political ideals of anti-capitalism and anti-colonialism, and skepticism of the state as a tool for emancipation. North Stars tackles questions of social movement convergence amidst a rise in right wing politics at the national level, and offers strategic and scholarly lessons – based on my 20+ years of participation in food and farming movements, and my engaged research with such movements in California.
I am organizing a book tour to New York City and Upstate (July 15-26, 2026), probably to universities in the Fall and thereafter, and I’m open to suggestions for book events, whether virtual or in person. Get in touch!
So far, events in the works are:
- July 16, P.I.T. NYC
- ~July 19-23, Abode Farm (upstate) (final date to be confirmed)
- July 21, Troy Media Sanctuary (upstate)
- July 24, Word Up Bookstore NYC 7-8:30pm (register here)
- October 22, in San Francisco, as part of LitQuake
Praise for the book includes:
Set against the backdrop of right-wing resurgence and deep racial reckoning, North Stars of Emancipation offers a critical and hopeful path forward for social change. Drawing on years of experience as an activist-scholar, Antonio Roman-Alcalá provides a vital analysis of California’s diverse food and farming movements, unveiling the long anarchist as well as socialist traditions behind some of the most influential and urgent movements for decolonization and liberation. These politics offer a radical and practical framework for change—as urgent as the crisis facing us all. North Stars of Emancipation will be helping scholars and activists compass the food movement for a long time to come.
~Raj Patel, coauthor of Inflamed and A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things
North Stars of Emancipation is a tour-de-force, a brilliant and compelling book on intersectional struggles within and against capitalist food systems in the era of the rising far right. All social movement activists and academics interested in emancipatory politics should read it.
~Saturnino (Jun) M. Borras Jr., coauthor of Scholar-Activism and Land Struggles
North Stars of Emancipation is a profound treatment of the complex barriers to transforming an exploitative industrial food system in clear need of it. Read for the data, the collective wisdom, but also to learn about, perhaps feel a part of, a burgeoning of creative thinking and searching action.
~Ricardo Salvador, Director and Senior Scientist of the Food and Environment Program, Union of Concerned Scientists