Is there such a thing as too many vegan cookbooks?

The vegan diet has become so mainstream that searching the term 'vegan' in Amazon.co.uk's book section brings up over 6,000 hits. While that figure is no doubt bloated by irrelevant results and cataloguing errors, it is indicative of the fact that vegan cookbooks have become almost mainstream in recent years. There is always a new release to look forward to and high-profile bloggers announcing their publishing deals. However, this glut has caused me to start feeling fatigued.

Before I say anything else, I admit to owning my fair share of cookbooks (although I get the impression that I have fewer than some other bloggers, and I have given away some that I didn't use to charity shops) and I understand the thrill and promise that comes with buying a new cookbook. When I first went vegan Isa Chandra Moscowitz's and Sarah Kramer's books taught me my first vegan recipes and introduced me to a world of new foods I had never encountered before. Vegan cookbooks have really helped me and I don't wish to detract from that. 

However, the current abundance of vegan cookbooks is making me question the state of the medium. Firstly, most vegan cookbooks written in the Anglosphere, which are sometimes translated to other languages besides English, are North American. While their themes, authors and styles vary considerably, I feel that they are coming from a limited perspective. I don't mean this as a criticism, my favourite cookbooks are American (I know Sarah Kramer is Canadian) and I love them and their authors. I am just commenting on a trend. Since going vegan I have learned alot about intersectional issues of privilege and perspectives and I feel that not enough of them are represented in vegan cookbooks. The great thing about the internet and blogs is that anyone in the world can share their vegan recipes and perspectives without a publishing deal. 

We are very fortunate that as a movement we have gotten to the stage that there are veganised recipes for almost anything we can imagine (and also that "veganise" is an accepted EN term), and what we haven't perfected is no doubt being worked on by some vegan food pioneer as we speak. I am not saying that we have hit a ceiling of vegan recipes, we are a creative community and will always be coming up with new culinary ideas.

My cookbook fatigue stems from a current fatigue with excess consumerism. Not that I will never buy another cookbook again, I am not making such a drastic statement, but my view at present is that I just don't need more. I am taking a step back. I now have the skills to make delicious vegan food with the resources available to me and I am content with that. I would love to see some of the resources that go into publishing cookbooks maybe going into other aspects of the movement, such a creating resources for making veganism accessible to people in different or less privileged situations.