Until We''re Seen - Public College Students Expose Hidden Inequalities of Covid 19

Firsthand accounts of COVID-19's devastating effects on working-class communities of color



The first months of the COVID-19 pandemic were filled with talk of heroes, the frontline workers who kept the country functioning. "And when they write those history books, the heroes of the battle will be the hardworking families of New York," Governor Andrew Cuomo trumpeted on Labor Day 2020. But what if those heroes, those essential workers and their families, wrote the book themselves?

In Until We're Seen, the heroes write their own stories. Through firsthand accounts by college students at Brooklyn College and California State University Los Angeles, Until We're Seen chronicles COVID-19's devastating, disproportionate effects on working-class communities of color, even as the United States has declared the pandemic over and looks away from its impacts.

Very few of these students and their families had the luxury of laboring from home; if they were able to keep their jobs, they took subways and buses, and they worked. They drove delivery trucks, worked in private homes, cooked food in restaurants for people to pick up, worked as EMTs, and did construction. They couldn't escape to second homes; if anything, more people moved in, as families were forced to consolidate to save money. Together, the accounts in this book show that the COVID-19 pandemic did discriminate, following the race and class fissures endemic to US society. But if these are tales of hardship, they are also love stories-of students' families, biological and chosen-and of the deep resolve, mundane carework, and herculean efforts such love entails.

Recounting 2020-2022 through the experiences of predominantly young, working-class immigrants and people of color living in the first two major US COVID-19 epicenters, Until We're Seen spotlights previously untold stories of the pandemic in New York, Los Angeles, and the nation as a whole.

List of contents

Introduction

Joseph Entin and Jeanne Theoharis

Part I. Essential Work, Disposable Workers

Chapter 1. UntilWe'reSeen

Samantha Saint Jour

Chapter 2. Prole-ific

Zayd Brewer

Chapter 3. Double Jeopardy

Tania Darbouze

Chapter 4. Beloved, but Forced to Live and Die in the Shadows

Yamilka Portorreal

Chapter 5. When Essential Student Workers Strike Back

Alan Aja

Part II. Race and Family

Chapter 6. Me, My Mom, and Her Mental Illness

Billie-Rae Johnson

Chapter 7. From Ahuehuetitla to Brooklyn: Immigrant Life Under COVID-19

Raúl Vaquero

Chapter 8. COVID-19 Deportations

Anthony Salazar Vazquez

Chapter 9. Chinatown Through a Pandemic: A Phoenix Rising

Kayla Gutierrez

Chapter 10. Black Lives Matter: COVID, Race, and Organized Abandonment

Rhea Rahman

Part III. Crises of Health and Housing

Chapter 11. America's Health Care System Needs 911

Anthony Almojera

Chapter 12. What It Means to Be an Anxious Pakistani During a Global Pandemic

Areeba Zanub

Chapter 13. Livin' in the Projects: COVID-19 and Community Resilience

Dominick Braswell

Chapter 14.COVID-19: Mortality by Zip Code

Marsha Decatus

Chapter 15. We See from Where We Stand: COVID-19 and the Shape of Us

Donna-Lee Granville

Part IV. Community Organizing, Mutual Aid, and Struggle

Chapter 16. (Need)les and Many Threads: Sewing Community from Pandemic Puerto Rico and Beyond

Daniel J. VázquezSanabria

Chapter 17. Everybody's Gotta Eat (It's Something My Dad Says)

Genesis Orea

Chapter 18. Black Lives Matter, COVID-19, and a Cyclical History

Adia Atherley

Chapter 19. Pandemic Deepens Food Inequality in Brooklyn: Live from Bed-Stuy

Khadhazha Welch

Chapter 20. On Invisibility

Lawrence Johnson

Part V. Gender, Sexuality, and Inequality in Los Angeles

Chapter 21. "Dónde está tu Ita?"

Wendy Casillas

Chapter 22. "In Our Eyes, He Was Everything": Immigrant Fathers, Workplace Regulations, and COVID 19

Maria Cerezo

Chapter 23. "Zoom School" and the Digital Divide in Immigrant Communities During

COVID-19

Elizabeth Leon Lopez

Chapter 24.Safer at Home? Negotiating Religion, UndocuLife, and Queerness during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Manuel (Manny) Ibarra

Chapter 25. Autoethnographies from the "Sacrifice Zone" of Latinx Los Angeles

Alejandra Marchevsky

Conclusion. This Book Is Not the Conclusion to the Pandemic

Joseph Entin, Jeanne Theoharis, and Student Contributors

Notes

List of Contributors

Index

Acknowledgments

About the author

Edited by Joseph Entin and Jeanne Theoharis, with Dominick Braswell

Product details

• Authors: Joseph Theoharis Entin
• Assisted by: Joseph Entin (Editor), Jeanne Theoharis (Editor)
• Publisher: University of pennsylvania pr
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 20.08.2024
• EAN: 9781512826371
• ISBN: 978-1-5128-2637-1
• No. of pages: 320
• Series: Contemporary Ethnography
• Subject: Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > Medicine > General