Winner of the 2026 Nach Waxman Prize in Food and Beverage Scholarship

Named BOOK OF THE YEAR by the International Labor History Association (ILHA)

Named the “Big Book of 2025” by the journal LABOR

Though Latin American cuisine has fully permeated and been embraced by the United States, Latin American/Latinx food workers of all kinds—from farmworkers to restaurant workers to street vendors—experience a paradoxical amount of criminalization, invisibility, and exploitation.

In Awaiting Their Feast I trace how the nation’s dual appetite for Latinx food and Latinx food labor has evolved from the World War II to COVID eras, using the US Northeast as a fascinating microcosm of this larger history.

Illuminating the experiences of food workers with roots in Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Central America, this book travels from New Jersey to Maine and examines different links in the food chain, from farming to seafood processing to restaurants to delivery apps. What unites this eclectic material is my argument that as our national appetite for Latinx food has grown, the visibility of Latinx food workers has drastically decreased, by design. This precariat is anything but passive, though. They have fought—and are still fighting—against low wages, medical neglect, criminalization, and deeply ironic food insecurity.

From Judges and Reviewers:

“Truly, there is nothing comparable―an innovative exploration at the intersection between food, labor, and Latinx history. Stunning!”―Llana Barber

“[A] magisterial study of the precarious lives of Latinx food workers in the US….At a time when already insecure food workers in the US are suffering from newly cruel government policies, Awaiting Their Feast resonates all the more strongly.” —Darra Goldstein

“Lori Flores is one of the most perceptive writers about migration and the migrants who do the work that gets food into our kitchens and bodies.” ―David Bacon

”Flores matches the ambition of her project’s scope with precisely rendered, human-first storytelling, bringing to vivid life the struggles and needs of laborers so often been effaced in traditional food narratives.” —Mayukh Sen