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

by Lori A. Flores

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 immigrant workers who harvest, process, cook, and sell this desirable food. Lori A. Flores traces how our dual appetite for Latinx&8239;food&8239;and Latinx food&8239;labor&8239;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.

272 pages, Paperback

Published January 14, 2025

About the author

Lori A. Flores is associate professor of history at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.