Women Redefine Experience of Food Insecurity (a New Book Edited by Local Community Nutrition Expert Janet Page-Reeves)

 “They strategize in order to access food stamps and charity food pantries, find bargains in low-price grocery stores, and exercise skill and imagination as they cook meals in their kitchens. Most important, each chapter goes beyond the shopping cart and the dinner table to examine what is ‘off the edge of the table.’ These structural constraints include neoliberal economic policies that keep wages low and reduce public assistance, a corporate food system that creates ‘food deserts’ in low-income communities, and ideologies that demonize women as uneducated consumers who make poor food choices. In these vivid accounts women emerge as knowledgeable active agents who develop food access expertise and find new sources of power and identity as creative cooks and caregivers.” 

Janet Page-Reeves, a long-time community nutrition and anti-hunger advocate, is the editor of  Women Redefining the Experience of Food Insecurity: Off the Edge of the Table. The book includes 12 case studies that focus on low-income women who must negotiate the constraints of the food system in order to put nutritious food on the table. (The above description of the book comes courtesy of  Louise Lamphere, emeritus faculty member at the  Anthropology Department at the University of New Mexico).

Ms.Page-Reeves, who also wrote the introductory chapter of the book, is accomplished in her field. She is  a research assistant professor at the Office for Community Health Department of Family & Community Medicine and a Senior Fellow at NM CARES Health Disparities Research Center at the University of New Mexico.  She was once on the staff of the New Mexico Association of  Food Banks and St. Joseph Community Health and helped put together a  comprehensive directory about food resources in Albuquerque in 2010.

Below is  the table of contents for the anthology,available online via a number of popular Internet sellers, including Lexington Books, Powell's,  Barnes & Noble, and  Amazon,

Click on flier for details of discount price

Foreward: Julie Nash

Part I: Introduction
Conceptualizing Food Insecurity and Women’s Agency: A Synthetic Introduction  Janet Page-Reeves

Part II: The Dimensionality of Food Insecurity
1. Another Time of Hunger Teresa Mares
2.Women, Welfare and Food Insecurity Maggie Dickinson
3.‘I took the lemons and I made lemonade’:Women’s Quotidian Strategies and the Re-Contouring of Food Insecurity in a Hispanic Community in New Mexico Janet Page-Reeves, Amy Anixter Scott, Maurice Moffett, Veronica Apodaca, and Vanessa Apodaca
4.Negotiating Food Security along the U.S.-Mexican Border: Social Strategies, Practice, and Networks among Mexican Immigrant Women  Lois Stanford

Part III: Disparities in Access to Healthy Food
5. ‘La Lucha Diaria’: Migrant Women in the Fight for Healthy Food   Megan Carney
6,  Women’s Knowledge and Experiences Obtaining Food in Low-Income Detroit Neighborhoods Daniel J. Rose
7. Is the Cup Half Empty or Is It Half Full? Economic Transition and Changing Ideas About Food Insecurity in Rural Costa Rica  David Himmelgreen, Nancy Romer-Daza, Allison Cantor and Sara Arias-Steele

Part IV: Women’s Agency and Contested Practices
8. Salvadoran Immigrant Women and the Culinary Making of Gendered Identities: “Food Grooming” as a Class and Meaning-Making Process Sharon Stowers
9. The Social Life of Coca-Cola in Southern Veracruz, Mexico: How Women Navigate Public Health Messages and Social Support through Drink  Mary Alice Scott
10 ‘Women not like they used to be : Food and Modernity in Rural Newfoundland  Lynne Phillips

Part V: Empowerment and Challenging the System 
11 Labor and Leadership: Women in U.S. Community Food Organizing Christine Porter and LaDonna Redmond
12 ‘I would have never….’: A Critical Examination of Women’s Agency for Food Security Through Participatory Action Research  Patricia L. Williams