Skimmed, Andrea Freeman
Skimmed, Andrea Freeman
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Skimmed
Breastfeeding, Race, and Injustice

Author: Andrea Freeman

Narrator: Randye Kaye

Unabridged: 8 hr 17 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 08/18/2020


Synopsis

Born into a tenant farming family in North Carolina in 1946, Mary Louise, Mary Ann, Mary Alice, and Mary Catherine were medical miracles. Annie Mae Fultz, a Black-Cherokee woman who lost her ability to hear and speak in childhood, became the mother of America's first surviving set of identical quadruplets. They were instant celebrities. Their White doctor named them after his own family members. He sold the rights to use the sisters for marketing purposes to the highest-bidding formula company. The girls lived in poverty, while Pet Milk's profits from a previously untapped market of Black families skyrocketed.

Over half a century later, baby formula is a seventy-billion-dollar industry and Black mothers have the lowest breastfeeding rates in the country. Since slavery, legal, political, and societal factors have routinely denied Black women the ability to choose how to feed their babies. In Skimmed, Andrea Freeman tells the riveting story of the Fultz quadruplets while uncovering how feeding America's youngest citizens is awash in social, legal, and cultural inequalities. This book highlights the making of a modern public health crisis, the four extraordinary girls whose stories encapsulate a nationwide injustice, and how we can fight for a healthier future.

About Andrea Freeman

Andrea Freeman is an associate professor at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa William S. Richardson School of Law. Freeman writes and researches at the intersection of critical race theory and issues of food policy, health, and consumer credit. She is the pioneer of the theory of "food oppression," which examines how partnerships between the government and corporations lead to racial and gender health disparities. Her work has been featured on NPR, Huffington Post, Salon, The Washington Post, The Conversation, Pacific Standard, and more.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Alexa

This was an intense book about a very important subject. Andrea Freeman certainly did her research. Every chapter has about 200 notations, and yet the text is very readable and makes you curious about what happens next. I had never heard of the Fultz quadruplets before and now I will never forget the......more

Goodreads review by Rebecca

I was so excited about this book, but ended up so disappointed by it that I didn't even finish it. I am a neonatal dietitian and certified lactation counselor, so I quickly identified multiple claims the author made as misleading or blatantly false, including: -The claim on page 116 that WIC stops pr......more

Goodreads review by Dawn

LOVED the analysis in this libro presenting the billion dollar formula industry and the way it deceptively interrupts the sacred act of breastfeeding between women and their babies, sowing doubt, insecurities, bad health ALL in the name of capitalism and greed - raking in profits on the backs of wom......more

The level of greed that fuels corruption and policy making in this country infuriates me!! I’m a NC native and I had never heard this story. This book is not only about the nations’s first surviving set of quadruplets and how bankrupt character, greed, political and corporate corruption corruption a......more