Until We're Seen

Public College Students Expose the Hidden Inequalities of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Joseph Entin, Jeanne Theoharis, Joseph Entin, Jeanne Theoharis

• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Year: 2024
• eBook ISBN:
  9781512826388
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Public Health, Administration & Care

Firsthand accounts of COVID-19's devastating effects on working-class communities of color The first months of the COVID-19 pandemic were filled with talk of heroes, the frontline workers who kept the country functioning. "And when they write those history books, the heroes of the battle will be the hardworking families of New York, " Governor Andrew Cuomo trumpeted on Labor Day 2020. But what if those heroes, those essential workers and their families, wrote the book themselves?In Until We're Seen, the heroes write their own stories. Through firsthand accounts by college students at Brooklyn College and California State University Los Angeles, Until We're Seen chronicles COVID-19's devastating, disproportionate effects on working-class communities of color, even as the United States has declared the pandemic over and looks away from its impacts.Very few of these students and their families had the luxury of laboring from home; if they were able to keep their jobs, they took subways and buses, and they worked. They drove delivery trucks, worked in private homes, cooked food in restaurants for people to pick up, worked as EMTs, and did construction. They couldn't escape to second homes; if anything, more people moved in, as families were forced to consolidate to save money. Together, the accounts in this book show that the COVID-19 pandemic did discriminate, following the race and class fissures endemic to US society. But if these are tales of hardship, they are also love stories—of students' families, biological and chosen—and of the deep resolve, mundane carework, and herculean efforts such love entails.Recounting 2020–2022 through the experiences of predominantly young, working-class immigrants and people of color living in the first two major US COVID-19 epicenters, Until We're Seen spotlights previously untold stories of the pandemic in New York, Los Angeles, and the nation as a whole.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction: When the Heroes Write Their Own Stories, What Do We See?
• Part I. Essential Work, Disposable Workers
• Part II. Racism, Family, and Commitments in a Time of Emergency
• Part III. Crises of Health and Housing
• Part IV. Community Organizing, Mutual Aid, and Struggle
• Part V. Gender, Sexuality, and Inequality in Los Angeles
• Conclusion: This Book Is Not a Conclusion to the Pandemic
• Notes
• List of Contributors
• Index
• Acknowledgments