Pressing Onward - by Jessica P Cerdeña

About the Book

"Pressing Onward narrates the lives of mothers who migrated from Latin America and settled in New Haven, Connecticut, overcoming trauma and ongoing adversity to build futures for their children. By enacting imperative resilience, migrant mothers engage cognitive and social strategies to resist racial, economic, and gender-based oppression to seguir adelante, or push onward. Both a contemporary view of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on racially minoritized populations and a timeless account of the ways immigration enforcement and healthcare inequality affect migrant mothers, Pressing Onward uses ethnography to tell a greater story of persistence amid longstanding structural violence"--

Book Synopsis

Pressing Onward centers the stories of mothers who migrated from Latin America, settled in New Haven, Connecticut, and overcame trauma and ongoing adversity to build futures for their children. These migrant mothers enact imperative resilience, engaging cognitive and social strategies to resist racial, economic, and gender-based oppression to seguir adelante, or press onward. Both a contemporary view of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on racially minoritized populations and a timeless account of the ways immigration enforcement and healthcare inequality affect migrant mothers, Pressing Onward uses ethnography to tell a greater story of persistence amid long-standing structural violence.

From the Back Cover

"Pressing Onward is a stunning book, taking well-studied themes and presenting a fresh, relevant, and innovative take. It is unique in several ways, managing to address many of the core themes related to Latinx populations in the United States. Really, really impressive."--Alyshia Gálvez, Professor of Latin American and Latino Studies and Anthropology at Lehman College

"Beautifully conceived and organized, Pressing Onward focuses on the resilient ways Latinx women have overcome adversity during a global pandemic and in doing so have supported their families, social relationships, and socio-spiritual selves."--Emily Mendenhall, author of Unmasked: COVID, Community, and the Case of Okoboji

"Jessica Cerdeña rethinks resilience as a form of resistance to oppression and inequity. The mothers whom she works alongside are blamed for the social and health inequities that affect them, but they actively press onward."--Seth M. Holmes, author of Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies and Chancellor's Professor at University of California, Berkeley

Review Quotes

"[Cerdeña's] own experiences as an activist and volunteer strengthen her commentary on the failures of health care services available to undocumented women, particularly in relation to prenatal and maternity needs. . . .. In the end, it is their words that give this work coherence and meaning. . . .Recommended."-- "CHOICE"

About the Author

Jessica P. Cerdeña is an anthropologist, family physician-in-training, and mother of two who lives in New Haven, Connecticut, where she advocates for racial justice and health equity (Twitter: @jes_cerdena).