Description
Book SynopsisAccording to the Latina health paradox, Mexican immigrant women have less complicated pregnancies and more favourable birth outcomes than many other groups, in spite of socioeconomic disadvantage. This takes us from inside the halls of a busy metropolitan hospital’s public prenatal clinic to the Oaxaca and Puebla states in Mexico to look at the ways Mexican women manage their pregnancies.
Trade Review"Alyshia Galvez challenges conventional wisdom on how Latinas plan families, making a very important contribution to understanding the Latino health paradox." -- Peter J. Guarnaccia, Ph.D. * Institute for Health, Health Care Policy & Aging Research, Rutgers University *
"This wonderful book demonstrates how immigrant knowledge is rendered irrelevant by the New York City medical establishment, and contributes to our understanding of large-scale transnational immigration issues examined through the lens of gender, pregnancy, and reproduction."
-- Rayna Rapp * author, Testing Women, Testing the Fetus: the Social Impact of Amniocentesis in *
"For years, health professionals have been intrigued by the so-called 'birth-weight paradox'—the fact that recently arrived Mexican immigrant women have fewer pregnancy complications and fewer low-birth-weight babies than their socioeconomic status would predict. Galvez casts the large New York City public hospital prenatal clinic at which she did her interviews as a site of 'subjectification'—the molding of Mexican immigrant women and their families into racialized, needy, passive subjects of medicalization, state intervention, and monitoring. In large part, the women submit because of their own narratives of bettering themselves by their move to the US. This brief description cannot do justice to the richness of Galvez's analysis and the complexity of the women's negotiations with the US health care system. Highly recommended."
* Choice *
"Alyshia Galvez challenges conventional wisdom on how Latinas plan families, making a very important contribution to understanding the Latino health paradox." -- Peter J. Guarnaccia, Ph.D. * Institute for Health, Health Care Policy & Aging Research, Rutgers University *
"This wonderful book demonstrates how immigrant knowledge is rendered irrelevant by the New York City medical establishment, and contributes to our understanding of large-scale transnational immigration issues examined through the lens of gender, pregnancy, and reproduction."
-- Rayna Rapp * author, Testing Women, Testing the Fetus: the Social Impact of Amniocentesis in *
"For years, health professionals have been intrigued by the so-called 'birth-weight paradox'—the fact that recently arrived Mexican immigrant women have fewer pregnancy complications and fewer low-birth-weight babies than their socioeconomic status would predict. Galvez casts the large New York City public hospital prenatal clinic at which she did her interviews as a site of 'subjectification'—the molding of Mexican immigrant women and their families into racialized, needy, passive subjects of medicalization, state intervention, and monitoring. In large part, the women submit because of their own narratives of bettering themselves by their move to the US. This brief description cannot do justice to the richness of Galvez's analysis and the complexity of the women's negotiations with the US health care system. Highly recommended."
* Choice *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
1. Paradoxes and Patients: Immigrants and Prenatal Care
2. Immigrant Aspirations and the Decisions Families Make
3. Remembering Reproductive Care in Rural Mexico
4. Becoming Patients: Birth Experiences in New York City
5. Critical Perspectives on Prenatal Care
6. Prenatal Care and the Reception of Immigrants: Reflections and Suggestions for Change
Epilogue
Notes
References
Index
