Two copies of ‘Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies: Migrant Farmworkers in the United States‘ by Seth M. Holmes (University of California Press, 2013) are available for review. We are looking for two contrasting perspectives on Holmes’ work, which could take the form of different academic perspectives or reviews by an academic and clinician. Expressions of interest are welcome from across the medical humanities.
‘Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies provides an intimate examination of the everyday lives and suffering of Mexican migrants in our contemporary food system. An anthropologist and MD in the mould of Paul Farmer and Didier Fassin, Holmes shows how market forces, anti-immigrant sentiment, and racism undermine health and health care.
Holmes’s material is visceral and powerful. He trekked with his companions illegally 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 U.S., 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 inequalities and suffering come to be perceived as normal and natural in society and in health care’.
If you would like to write a review on ‘Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies'(approximately 1,000 words in length), then please email our reviews editor with a short explanation of why you are well placed to review the book.
Review guidelines can be found here.