Skimmed: Breastfeeding, Race, and Injustice

· Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Randye Kaye
Audiobook
8 hr 17 min
Unabridged
Eligible
Ratings and reviews aren’t verified  Learn More
Want a 49 min sample? Listen anytime, even offline. 
Add

About this audiobook

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 the author

Andrea Freeman is an associate professor at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa William S. Richardson School of Law. 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.

Randye Kaye is an accomplished voice talent, actress, singer, broadcaster, and author. She received a Listen-Up Award nomination and starred reviews for Ben Behind His Voices, which she also wrote, bringing together the various facets of her career.

Rate this audiobook

Tell us what you think.

Listening information

Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can read books purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.

More by Andrea Freeman

Similar audiobooks

Narrated by Randye Kaye