Awaiting Their Feast: Latinx Food Workers and Activism from World War II to COVID-19
Author(s): Lori A. Flores (Author)
- Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
- Publication Date: January 14, 2025
- Language: English
- Print length: 272 pages
- ISBN-10: 1469679868
- ISBN-13: 9781469679860
Book Description
Though Latinx foodways are eagerly embraced and consumed by people across the United States, the nation exhibits a much more fraught relationship with Latinx people, including the largely underpaid and migrant workers who harvest, process, cook, and sell this desirable food. Lori A. Flores traces how our dual appetite for Latinx food and Latinx food labor has evolved from the World War II era to the COVID-19 pandemic, using the US Northeast as an unexpected microcosm of this national history.
Spanning the experiences of food workers with roots in Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Central America, Flores’s narrative travels from New Jersey to Maine and examines different links in the food chain, from farming to restaurants to seafood processing to the deliverista rights movement. What unites this eclectic material is Flores’s contention that as our appetite for Latinx food has grown exponentially, the visibility of Latinx food workers has demonstrably decreased. This precariat is anything but passive, however, and has historically fought—and is still fighting—against low wages and exploitation, medical neglect, criminalization, and deeply ironic food insecurity.
Editorial Reviews
Review
“A necessary reminder about the importance of Latinx workers to the United States. . . . The book’s use of a bottom-up approach would be a useful addition to scholars of the U.S., Latin America, and readers of all levels, especially those interested in the Latinx experience in the United States. I look forward to scholars who will heed to Flores’s call about addressing Latinx history in the Northeast United States, and, I might add, those who focus on the Latinx experience during COVID-19.”—A Contracorriente
“A timely discussion about the contradictions and tensions between consumer appetites and the hungers of those who labor. . . . Flores’s
Awaiting Their Feast invites students, instructors, and researchers to consider what they may learn when they center the aspects of everyday life that are most often taken for granted.”—H-Environment
“Using an impressive breadth of sources . . . [Flores] sees the opportunity and even obligation of scholars to promote food justice. . . . [
Awaiting Their Feast] is a critical and original contribution in its focus on Latinx food workers . . . spotlight on the Northeast . . . connections to and concerns about the conditions of current labor, and appreciation for the voices and perspectives of those who hunger for more.”—Pacific Historical Review
“Exciting and well-conceived, this rich and skillful narrative is sure to become a foundational text in the field. Truly, there is nothing comparable—an innovative exploration at the intersection between food, labor, and Latinx history. Stunning!”—Llana Barber, author of
Latino City: Immigration and Urban Crisis in Lawrence, Massachusetts, 1945–2000
“Lori Flores is one of the most perceptive writers about migration and the migrants who do the work that gets food into our kitchens and bodies. In
Awaiting Their Feast she brings to light how migrants eat and produce food at the same time, which becomes the key to understanding their impact on this country’s national cuisine. Consumers who value the pleasure we get from eating should afford workers the same, knowing that this means seeing more clearly who they are and what they fight for. This book opens the door to that understanding.”—David Bacon, author of Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants
“This important book explains why it matters that so many Americans happily eat tacos, salsa, and farm produce but care nothing for the Latinx workers who grow and cook that bounty. Industrial agribusiness profits from ignoring their toil and denying their human rights.”—Jeffrey Pilcher, author of
Planet Taco: A Global History of Mexican Food
“Grounded in a wealth of research, filled with extremely compelling stories, and conceived by an author highly qualified to write it. This book is much needed.”—Aviva Chomsky, author of
Central America’s Forgotten History: Revolution, Violence, and the Roots of Migration
Review
“Grounded in a wealth of research, filled with extremely compelling stories, and conceived by an author highly qualified to write it. This book is much needed.”—Aviva Chomsky, author of Central America’s Forgotten History: Revolution, Violence, and the Roots of Migration
Book Description
The many hungers of Latinx food workers.
About the Author
Lori A. Flores is associate professor of history at Stony Brook University.
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