Liberating bodies and food systems from the everyday violence of industrial sustenance

Abstract

First paragraph:

Seth M. Holmes’s book, Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies: Migrant Farmworkers in the United States, initially published in 2013 and revised in 2023, lays out the hidden costs of superfoods that are widely considered to be health-giving and life-enriching. These high-value, high-nutrition crops feed the bodies of the relatively affluent who can afford to shelter themselves from the environmental harms of living in a toxic world. Holmes delves into an embodied exploration of the suffering and harm enacted upon bodies of Triqui migrant farmwork­ers, Indigenous People from Western Oaxaca, Mexico, who suffer physical, chemical, and psycho­logical distress to make these foods available to consumers. He addresses this suffering through his lived perspective based on his dual training as an anthropologist and physician based in the United States. Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies is a multisited eth­nography that follows some of the people who work to cultivate and harvest these foods. The prize-winning book has been well received and widely shared in the 12 years since its initial publi­cation. New to this edition are an updated preface and epilogue (the epilogue is co-authored by Jorge Ramirez-Lopez) on the continuing process of addressing food systems that replicate and rein­force social inequities and violence. These addi­tions expand the continued life of the original edition, which was shared with every member of the U.S. Congress to advance policy discussions of a just food system in America. . . .