Meatpacking America

How Migration, Work, and Faith Unite and Divide the Heartland

De: Kristy Nabhan-Warren

Narrado por: Emily Durante

Whether valorized as the heartland or derided as flyover country, the Midwest became instantly notorious when COVID-19 infections skyrocketed among workers in meatpacking plants - and Americans feared for their meat supply. But the Midwest is not simply the place where animals are fed corn and then butchered. Native Midwesterner Kristy Nabhan-Warren spent years interviewing Iowans who work in the meatpacking industry, both native-born residents and recent migrants from Latin America, Africa, and Asia. In Meatpacking America, she digs deep below the stereotype and reveals the grit and grace of a heartland that is a major global hub of migration and food production-and also, it turns out, of religion.

Across the flatlands, Protestants, Catholics, and Muslims share space every day as worshippers, employees, and employers. On the bloody floors of meatpacking plants, in bustling places of worship, and in modest family homes, longtime and newly arrived Iowans spoke to Nabhan-Warren about their passion for religious faith and desire to work hard for their families. Their stories expose how faith-based aspirations for mutual understanding blend uneasily with rampant economic exploitation and racial biases. Still, these new and old Midwesterners say that a mutual language of faith and morals brings them together more than any of them would have ever expected.

©2021 The University of North Carolina Press (P)2021 Tantor

Everyone who eats meat should listen

I just finished this book about how meatpacking plants in Iowa are work opportunities for immigrants - from previous white immigrant workers from Ireland and Germany to nowaday immigrant workers. It talks extensively about faith and religion in immigrant families, thus the first part of the book is really The State of the Catholic Church in Iowa, but if you stick with it the middle and end of the book is fascinating! She also talks about a tour of a meatpacking plant. As a farmer who raises beef on a small family farm in northern IL, it opened up my mind and eyes to immigrants and the people who work very hard in the meatpacking industry. I think everyone who eats meat should listen to it.