Our work shines a light on the suffering caused by animals’ rightlessness
and their need for freedom and dignity. Thanks to a new graphic novel about
the NhRP’s elephant client Happy and our fight for legal rights for animals,
that light is now bigger and brighter.
Thing: Inside the Struggle for Animal Personhood tells Happy’s life
story and makes clear–through moving imagery, a sweeping narrative, and
thoughtful explorations of law, philosophy, history, science, and more–all
that Happy has lost through her decades of captivity in the Bronx Zoo and
how her court case has forever changed the legal landscape for nonhuman
beings.
Illustrated and written by comic artists Sam Machado and Cynthia Sousa Machado with the NhRP’s founder and president Steven M. Wise, it is the first graphic nonfiction book about animal rights. Publishers Weekly has called it “thought-provoking and inspiringly hopeful.”
Globally, nonhuman animals (animals) are considered to be “things”—objects and property—in the eyes of legal systems with no fundamental rights. Clearly, animals who have complex minds, deep social, intellectual, and emotional lives, and who are able to make choices (have agency) and display self-recognition are not things. Yet, Happy, a clearly smart and sentient elephant, has been caged at the Bronx Zoo for most of her 48 years and has remained largely isolated and lonely for more than a decade.
Some of the nitty-gritty scientific, philosophical, and legal details about what it means to grant personhood and fundamental rights to other animals are difficult for people to understand, and I’m pleased that a new beautifully designed and illustrated book written by award-winning cartoonists Sam Machado, Cynthia Sousa Machado with lawyer Steven Wise titled Thing: Inside the Struggle for Animal Personhood clarifies many of the difficult and not-so-difficult to understand issues.
Read the
ENTIRE INTERVIEW HERE: Animals Are Not "Things": Happy the Elephant and
Personhood.
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