Just like any good chef, a vegan chef needs to be equipped with the right tools: fresh plant-based ingredients, a sharp knife, and -- of course -- a few good books. Over the course of rabble.ca's vegan challenge, the book lounge will provide a sampling of some recently published books available for vegans and aspiring vegans.

This is the second of a two-part series. Read the first part here!

What is a feminist?

Is a feminist an academic who can quote bell hooks and Betty Friedan with ease? Is a feminist a great orator who steps up to podiums, demanding freedom for all women, using buzzwords such as marginalization, empowerment and exploitation? Is a feminist white, benefitting from class privilege and well-versed in feminist theory, as the representation in last week's highly criticized CBC documentary The F Word might suggest? Or is being a feminist simply antiquated, as columnist Margaret Wente declares "The war for women's rights is over. And we won."

Save the world.

These three ambiguous words have slipped off the tongues of well-meaning parents and empathetic teachers for decades, designed to empower and thrust youth into action. To us, the children of the 80s and 90s, this seemed like a challenge -- a charge to change the world placed firmly on our shoulders.

Our elementary school classrooms were plastered with posters urging us to save the whales, the forests, and the bald eagles. "Reduce, reuse, recycle" was more than just a slogan; it was a mantra. And even before we knew what the ozone layer was, we knew that we had to save it.

This is a good thing, right? Maybe not, argues Courtney E. Martin, the author of Do It Anyway: The New Generation of Activists.