With a new preface and a new epilogue co-written with Jorge
Ramirez-Lopez, this updated edition of Fresh Fruit, Broken
Bodies provides an intimate examination of the everyday
lives, suffering, and resistance of Mexican migrants in our
contemporary food system.
Seth
Holmes, an anthropologist and MD in the mold of Paul Farmer and
Didier Fassin, shows how market forces, anti-immigrant sentiment, and
racism undermine health and health care. Holmes was invited to trek
with his companions clandestinely through the desert into Arizona and
was jailed with them before they were deported. He lived with
Indigenous families in the mountains of Oaxaca and in farm labor
camps in the United States, planted and harvested corn, picked
strawberries, and accompanied sick workers to clinics and hospitals.
This "embodied anthropology" deepens our theoretical
understanding of the ways in which social inequities come to be
perceived as normal and natural in society and in health care. In a
new epilogue, Holmes and Indigenous Oaxacan scholar Jorge
Ramirez-Lopez provide a substantive update about the protagonists in
the book, focusing on the ways in which they have been involved
individually and collectively in movements for Indigenous immigrant
rights, farmworker rights, and the right to health over the last
decade.
