Consumed: The need for collective change; colonialism, climate change & consumerism

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If you are aged between 13 and 16 years of age and are just learning about the unjust systems of wealth inequality, colonialism and the extractive and harmful practices of consumerism fuelled by late capitalism please you’re the audience I would recommend this book for. From a structural standpoint, Aja could have omitted rhetorical questions and statements like “I couldn’t agree more,” which cheapen the content of the preceding paragraphs. Additionally, they explore what happens to garments at the end of their life cycle, often finding their way to places like the Kantamanto market. The book, in my opinion, gets much better towards the end of this chapter and then into the following ones - however I still have one remaining critique, and that is simply that the book is really repetitive in this part. Aja talks in depth of most topics that surround sustainable fashion and links history into it to explain and back up what she says.

Footnotes (especially à la Junot Díaz in The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao) can be incredibly useful here, since Aja provides a lot of personal commentary in her work. In fact, one of her chapters is titled, “How Society Works,” a bold claim, since she doesn’t explicitly disclaim that she’s referring to society in the Global North. colonialism is present in the fashion industry: takes resources away, exploits workers, sends back clothes. I liked the illustrations and the physical book is beautiful, but also felt like the structure was a little disjointed, and although the personal anecdotes were helpful in some places, I thought they were way overdone.Neither did I read the reviews on “Consumed” prior to reading it, as I wanted to form my own opinion. Using simple examples, like the blue ball/green ball analogy and stories from her upbringing, Barber is able to connect with the reader and discuss uncomfortable subjects.

However, it became apparent to me that she never intended the book to be a scholarly or journalistic piece, as some reviewers seem to expect. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Consumed takes us through the hideously complex topic of fashion and sustainability, from its knotty colonial roots to what everyday people can do to uproot those systems, today. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. All of these elements were present in Aja's book, however they came in at random moments, accompanied by asides which were often productive discussion topics (e.

And how these oppressive systems have bled into the fashion industry and its lack of diversity and equality. While I wish the content was a bit more organized and backed up with more sources and statistics, I think the format is perfect for someone who is learning about climate change and consumption for the first time. I loved Aja provided concrete actions on how to go initiate change and I look forward to seeing how I can adjust my habits to help reduce my consumption. Aja Barber lays out the reality of this level of consumption and how it effects the garment workers and planet as a whole. Regardless, Consumed misses the mark, as its shortcomings eclipse some of the most important discussions in the book: the impact of textile waste in Ghana's Kantamanto Market, Anannya Bhattacharjee’s take on labor rights for garment workers in Asia, and Aja’s tips on how to get off the hedonistic capitalist treadmill as a Global North consumer.

Both important, but not clearly defined as separate issues in this book, which from the title kind of sounds like its only about the latter.There was a lot here that I feel like I was exposed to in terms of the impact of fast fashion, but this was pretty comprehensive, very well articulated, accessible, and I absolutely loved how Barber kept tying everything back to Colonialism. This added to overall disappointment: The subtitle and some of the recommendations lead me to expect a deeper analysis. I would admire the attempt at trying to make such large subjects more accessible, however it just comes across as really lazy and uninformed writing. This powerful, speaking-truth-to-power book is an essential read for everybody who wants to stop feeling clueless and helpless about the impacts of consumerism, and start doing their part to help create a more sustainable world. I thought that Aja's book would be on the level of their Instagram posts - snappy, sharp and approaching the issue comprehensively from all angles.

This is a genuinely bad book, and I don’t say that lightly, but for a non fiction title covering such broad and significant topics, this is an awful attempt. This book is a great entry-point for folks who haven’t yet, or are very newly considering their position within systems of oppression. Nonetheless, a book with subject matter as important and relevant as this has to get at least 3 stars, especially when its coming from somebody like Aja, who has devoted her career to discussing sustainable and ethical fashion choices whilst simultaneously being a voice for the POC whose voices we unfortunately do not hear when they are working too many hours producing shitty clothing for Boohoo. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc. On the flip side, I enjoyed her “Ways to Learn Actively” section on page 184-187, which serves as a template of how the whole book could have been organized, providing concrete, easy-to-follow tips on how to become a more conscious consumer.However, Consumed makes bold, generalized claims—often lacking citations—and is poorly structured to the extent that crucial sections get lost in her asides and redundant platitudes. They target countries with lax labour laws, with poor safety and where they can save as much money as possible to inflate their profit margins. Facebook sets this cookie to show relevant advertisements to users by tracking user behaviour across the web, on sites that have Facebook pixel or Facebook social plugin.