Radical Health: Unwellness, Care, and Latinx Expressive Culture
Radical Health: Unwellness, Care, and Latinx Expressive Culture
by Julie Avril Minich
Duke University Press, 2023 eISBN: 978-1-4780-2739-3 | Paper: 978-1-4780-2525-2 | Cloth: 978-1-4780-2047-9 Library of Congress Classification RA778.4.H57M56 2023
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK
In Radical Health Julie Avril Minich examines the potential of Latinx expressive culture to intervene in contemporary health politics, elaborating how Latinx artists have critiqued ideologies of health that frame wellbeing in terms of personal behavior. Within this framework, poor health—obesity, asthma, diabetes, STIs, addiction, and high-risk pregnancies—is attributed to irresponsible lifestyle choices among the racialized poor. Countering this, Latinx writers and visual artists envision health not as individual duty but as communal responsibility. Bringing a disability justice approach to questions of health access and equity, Minich locates a concept of radical health within the work of Latinx artists, including the poetry of Rafael Campo, the music of Hurray for the Riff Raff, the fiction of Angie Cruz, and the performance art of Virginia Grise. Radical health operates as a modality that both challenges the stigma of unhealth and protests the social conditions that give rise to racial health disparities. Elaborating on this modality, Minich claims a critical role for Latinx artists in addressing the structural racism in public health.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Julie Avril Minich is Associate Professor of English and Mexican American and Latina/o Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, coeditor of Crip Genealogies, also published by Duke University Press, and author of Accessible Citizenships: Disability, Nation, and the Cultural Politics of Greater Mexico.
REVIEWS
“Radical Health is a necessary and timely intervention in the fields of critical race and disability studies. Julie Avril Minich challenges us to nuance our approaches to health as a structural and social issue. This book is immensely valuable to anyone studying health in the United States today, especially in the wake of the mass disablement caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.”
-- Sami Schalk, author of Black Disability Politics
“By drawing attention to the racialized, economic, and gendered forms of violence imposed on Latinx communities by the US healthcare system, Radical Health will alter the way that both Latinx studies and disability studies are practiced. I cannot stress how important this book is. Its urgency and timeliness makes it essential reading for everyone committed to the struggle for health justice.”
-- Richard T. Rodríguez, author of A Kiss Across the Ocean: Transatlantic Intimacies of British Post-Punk and US Latinidad
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix Introduction: Radical Health/Radical Unwellness 1 1. Unprotected Texts: Queer Latinx Expression in the Aftermath of AIDS 24 2. Sugar, Shame, Love: Diabetic Latinidades 52 3. Healing Without a Cure: Radical Health and Racialized Gender Violence 82 4. Mental Health and Migrant Justice: Family Separation and Reimagining Wellness 116 Remedio: The Navigator 150 Notes 167 References 187 Index 207
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