Testimonios of Care

Feminist Latina/x and Chicana/x Perspectives on Caregiving Praxis

Edited by Natalia Deeb-Sossa, Yvette G. Flores, and Angie Chabram

The University of Arizona Press

The first English-language collection of Latina/x caregiving testimonios, this volume gives voice to diverse Chicana/x and Latina/x caregiving experiences. Bringing together thirteen first-person accounts, these testimonios speak to the tragic flaws in our health-care system and the woefully undervalued labor of providing care to family and community.

The book opens with an introductory chapter by the three co-editors, and then is divided into three sections exploring the caregiver voice, community caregiving, and reflections that outline a Caregiver Bill of Rights and present a call to action. Throughout, contributors discuss kinship care, including formal and informal adoptions, community care, caregiving in professional health contexts, and the implicit caregiving inherent in teaching BIPOC students, which largely falls upon faculty of color.

Testimonios of Care gives voice to those who often are voiceless in histories of caregiving and is guided by Chicana and Latina feminist principles, which include solidarity between women of color, empathy, willingness to challenge the patriarchal medical health-care systems, questioning traditional gender roles and idealization of familia, and caring for self while caring for loved ones and community.

Contributors
yvonne hurtado allen
Angie Chabram
Natalia Deeb-Sossa
Yvette G. Flores
Inés Hernández-Ávila
ire’ne lara silva
Josie Méndez-Negrete
Maria R. Palacios
Hector Rivera-Lopez
Maria Angelina Soldatenko
Anita Tijerina Revilla
Mónica Torreiro-Casal
Enriqueta Valdez-Curiel

Reviews
Editor

What a beautiful contribution to humanity. Each and every chapter is an offering—a brave and vulnerable collection to share the gifts and challenges of caregiving. These are a collection of prayers for a better world.’—Rebeca Burciaga, San José State University

‘Testimonios of Care is written from a place of radical love and vulnerability. The authors document the important physical and emotional labor of caregiving in Latinx communities, as well as the equally rigorous spiritual work of examining the contradictions and challenges of being a caregiver.’—Irene Lara, San Diego State University

Natalia Deeb-Sossa is a professor in the Department of Chicana/o Studies at University of California, Davis, and the co-chair of the UC Ethnic Studies Council. She is the author of Doing Good and the co-editor of Latinx Belonging.

Yvette G. Flores is a distinguished professor of psychology in the Department of Chicana/o Studies at the University of California, Davis, where she has taught for more than three decades. She is a national and international consultant on cultural humility; prevention and treatment of trauma; and gender, migration, and mental health.

Angie Chabram is professor emerita at the University of California, Davis. She is the co-editor of Speaking from the Body and the editor of The Chicana/o Cultural Studies Reader.

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