All sorts of nonhuman animals (animals) have opinions about what they like, dislike, or want or don’t want to do. They express themselves in many different ways just as we do, and as weird as some nonhuman (and human) choices may seem to us, that’s what they want to do. <\/p>\n
For these and other reasons, when I learned of Harvard-educated lawyer Michelle Lerner’s new book A Series of Opinionated Animals<\/a>, I couldn’t wait to read about a panoply of astonishing opinionated animals including “a disabled sheep named Lamby\u2015the ‘Woolly Bully<\/a>‘\u2015[who] wears children\u2019s skateboarding elbow pads, develops a taste for blue corn chips, and learns to herd cats, all while demanding her meals by ramming her head against the kitchen door” and a squirrel named Monster who “recovers from his mysterious past by throwing tantrums, serenading the neighborhood with squirrel opera, and forming an inseparable bond with a patient rabbit named Finn.” If you’re wondering why Lerner wrote this fascinating and engaging book, read on. <\/p>\n Marc Bekoff: Why did you write A Series of Opinionated Animals? <\/p>\n Michelle Lerner: After I finished writing my novel, Ring, a serious literary fiction endeavor about grief<\/a>, I started a historical novel but didn\u2019t feel like working on it. My spouse, Gray, had just finished reading How to Be a Good Creature by Sy Montgomery and said, \u201cYou should write about our animals.\u201d I replied that lots of people have animals\u2014it\u2019s common\u2014so why would people want to read about ours? \u201cWell,\u201d he said, \u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s common to have a neurologically impaired squirrel, a disabled sheep, and six cats with feline leukemia at your house. Or to go to Harvard Law School because of your horse.\u201d And I thought, touch\u00e9. <\/p>\n I\u2019ve always viewed animals as people, not as humans, but as having personhood. I\u2019ve navigated my life accordingly, and I went to law school in my 20s thinking I\u2019d find a legal way to recognize their personhood. Decades later, animal lawyers are still strategizing about it (though corporations are afforded legal personhood!). <\/p>\n When Gray suggested that I write this book, I realized that offering readers a window into our days filled with outrageous quirky creatures of multiple species might be an effective way to get animal personhood considered on a practical level. Humorous, entertaining writing about individual animals can do two things at once: endear readers to animals they might not otherwise think of as \u201cmain characters,\u201d and serve as a Trojan horse for getting them thinking about the legal and policy issues affecting these animals. The literary equivalent of YouTube cat videos occasionally interrupted by public service announcements.<\/p>\n MB: How does your book relate to your background and general areas of interest? <\/p>\n ML: I went to Harvard Law School to become an animal lawyer, and since Harvard didn\u2019t teach animal law, I started a student group that lobbied for it first animal law class. That class was taught after I graduated; it eventually developed into the Harvard Law School Animal Law and Policy Program, which is now celebrating its 25th anniversary. <\/p>\n After law school, I spent a decade as a legal aid lawyer, returned to animal law, and did policy work for the Animal Protection League of New Jersey for the last nine years of my legal career<\/a>, before becoming disabled by illness. <\/p>\n I\u2019ve also been involved in animal rescue for most of my life, and for the past 17 years I\u2019ve run a local Trap-Neuter-Return and cat rescue project. <\/p>\n Through all of this, I\u2019ve been a writer, largely poetry, though I published the novel last year and have occasionally written essays for publications like Time and The Hill. <\/p>\n A Series of Opinionated Animals draws from all these facets of my background; I tell the stories of individual animals in narrative while pulling information about rescue and legal and policy issues. <\/p>\n MB: Who do you hope to reach? <\/p>\n ML: Everyone! On some level, I wrote this book for people with less experience with animals of varying species to understand their individuality and quirkiness or recognize their personhood. The book is like an armchair tour through a sanctuary. As Gene<\/a> Bauer wrote in his blurb, visiting animals at a sanctuary changes hearts and minds, and A Series of Opinionated Animals helps people meet and learn about animals on that kind of personal level from the comfort of their home or wherever they like to read. <\/p>\n But the book is also a love letter to people who already understand animal personhood, and to rescuers, and it\u2019s intended for them as well. <\/p>\n MB: What are topics you consider, and what are some of your major messages? <\/p>\n