Caribeños at the Table

How Migration, Health, and Race Intersect in New York City

Melissa Fuster

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN:
  9781469664583
• Print ISBN:
  9781469664576
  9781469664569
• Subtopic: Global Development Studies

Melissa Fuster thinks expansively about the multiple meanings of comida, food, from something as simple as a meal to something as complex as one’s identity. She listens intently to the voices of New York City residents with Cuban, Dominican, or Puerto Rican backgrounds, as well as to those of the nutritionists and health professionals who serve them. She argues with sensitivity that the migrants’ health depends not only on food culture but also on important structural factors that underlie their access to food, employment, and high-quality healthcare.

People in Hispanic Caribbean communities in the United States present high rates of obesity, diabetes, and other diet-related diseases, conditions painfully highlighted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Both eaters and dietitians may blame these diseases on the shedding of traditional diets in favor of highly processed foods. Or, conversely, they may blame these on the traditional diets of fatty meat, starchy root vegetables, and rice. Applying a much needed intersectional approach, Fuster shows that nutritionists and eaters often misrepresent, and even racialize or pathologize, a cuisine’s healthfulness or unhealthfulness if they overlook the kinds of economic and racial inequities that exist within the global migration experience.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figure and Table
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: When Motion Turns Foods into Comidas
• Chapter One: Setting Hispanic Caribbean Tables in New York City
• Chapter Two: Culture as Cause and Solution
• Chapter Three: Caribeños Talk about Comidas in Nutri-speak
• Chapter Four: Gathering, Cooking, and Eating Comidas
• Conclusion: Comidas Back Home and Moving Forward
• Hispanic Caribbean Foods: A Glossary
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index