Awaiting Their Feast

<p>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 <i>food</i> and Latinx food <i>labor</i> 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.<br/><br/>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.</p>