Associate Law Professor Andrea Freeman will discuss her new book - 
“Skimmed: Breastfeeding, Race and Injustice” - on Friday, February 21 beginning at 5:30 p.m. in the Davis Levin Livingston Moot Court Room at the William S. Richardson School of Law at UH. Khara Jabola-Carolus, Executive Director of the Hawaii Committee on the Status of Women, will join Professor Freeman in the discussion.
A second discussion will be held from 1- 2:30 p.m. Sunday, February 23, at da Shop bookstore at 3565 Harding Ave. Joining the conversation will be health educator Dr. Maile Taualii. This event will also include an open discussion with the audience as well as family-friendly art activities.
Professor Freeman’s book tells the story of the famous “Fultz Quads” - four identical sisters born into a North Carolina tenant farming family in 1946. They were America's first surviving African American quadruplets.
The book traces the story of how their white doctor sold the rights to use the girls for marketing purposes to the highest-bidding formula company. Over half a century later, baby formula is a $70 billion industry and African American mothers have the lowest breastfeeding rates in the country.
Professor Freeman explores what she has described as “food oppression” - cooperation between government and the food, agricultural, and pharmaceutical industries that leads to race, gender, and class disparities. The story of the Fultz sisters “encapsulate a nationwide injustice,” said Freeman. “Since slavery, legal, political, and societal factors have routinely denied black women the ability to choose how to feed their babies.”
Her book also explores historical and current beliefs about breastfeeding, as well as how law and policy lead to “first” food oppression affecting America’s youngest citizens.
Law School Dean Avi Soifer said, “Andrea’s book is a major achievement, and it is already generating a great deal of attention across multiple academic areas, but it is certainly not only of academic interest. It ought to be and will be widely read by the general public.”
Professor Freeman will be available to sign her book after the Law School talk; light pupus will be served. The UH Bookstore will have books available for purchase that evening.