
Radical Health
Unwellness, Care, and Latinx Expressive Culture
Julie Avril Minich(Author)
Duke University Press
Published on 27. October 2023
Book
Paperback/Softback
232 pages
978-1-4780-2525-2 (ISBN)
Description
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.
Reviews / Votes
"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. Rodriguez, author of (A Kiss Across the Ocean: Transatlantic Intimacies of British Post-Punk and US Latinidad) "Julie Avril Minich's Radical Health powerfully argues for the political interventions of Latinx aesthetic work. She claims art as a social justice tool, asserting its capacity to critique dominant conceptions of health by reimagining the current and possible contexts in which individuals make about their bodyminds."- Shannon Potter (E3W Review of Books)
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
North Carolina
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 18 mm
Weight
340 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4780-2525-2 (9781478025252)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
09/2023
1st Edition
De Gruyter
€35.49
Available for download
Person
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.
Content
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
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