Awaiting Their Feast: Latinx Food Workers and Activism from World War II to Covid-19

A few words from Lori:

“This book reveals the multiple and profound ways that Latinx communities have sustained and shaped the U.S. food industry, at the same time that they have expanded and electrified so much of what we think is culinarily desirable and exciting. Without their labor, all the links in our national food chain would likely suffer or fail. ‘Awaiting Their Feast’ lifts out some key moments in which these food workers contested their invisibility and made moves to make themselves seen, heard, and better compensated. In addition to more familiar routes of collective protest such as union strikes, rallies, or marches, they have engaged in gastropolitical demonstrations by stopping food production for others; asking for better food for themselves while working; using or seeking out food to challenge power relations; or becoming food entrepreneurs themselves when other workscapes did not serve them. While this book excavates histories of struggle and hardship, it also emphasizes food workers’ agency, fuller lives and desires, and alternative visions regarding more just worlds of food. The hunger spoken of here is twofold. The first is physiological, related to a shortfall of calories and nutrition. The second is emotional — a longing for other dignities. Without the privileges they deserved, Latinx food workers have found ways throughout history to talk about and fight for food that meant something to them. This book exposes uncomfortable truths about how the modern U.S. food system has stayed in operation, and how Latinx foodways have been fetishized and appropriated. Yet it also highlights the powerful moments when people — who were designed and told to stay out of view — articulated their hungers in impressive and disruptive ways.”

Synopsis:

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 U.S. 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.