Description
Book SynopsisTaking Health to the Streets in Puerto Rico: Resisting Gastronomic, Psychiatric, and Diabetes Colonialism traces the ways in which diabetes, depression, and food insecurity interact under the rule of US colonization in Puerto Rico as well as the ways in which these illnesses are interlaced with contemporary culture, colonization, and politics. Central to the book, and critical to its unique creative significance and contribution, is the conceptual unification of politicized health and the embodiment of identity and social inequality in Puerto Rico. Ultimately, the advancement of health equity in Puerto Rico is a matter of decolonization, and vice versa.
Trade ReviewWritten from the perspective of biocultural critical medical anthropology, but adding to the powerful legacy of Sidney Mintz’s influential book Sugar and Power, Shir Lerman Ginzburg offers a moving ethnographic account of sugar colonialism, diabetes, depression, and food insecurity in Puerto Rico. Rich with the perspectives and experiences of her interlocutor participants, this insightful text is a significant contribution to the decolonization of health movement.
-- Merrill Singer, emeritus professor, University of Connecticut
Table of ContentsPart I: The Individual and the Historical
Chapter 1 Gastronomic Colonization: The Politics of Food Insecurity
Chapter 2 Melancholy and Power[lessness]: Depression in the Age of Colonization
Chapter 3 Diabetes: The Pissing Evile
Part II: The Social and the Structural
Chapter 4 Loved and Loathed: Structural Health and Politics in Puerto Rico
Chapter 5 Biological Violence
Chapter 6 Health in the Streets: Taking Action for Puerto Rico
