Megan Carney’s ethnography, The Unending Hunger, provides a raw and uncensored look at the complexities and contradictions of food insecurity through the eyes of primarily undocumented, immigrant women from Mexico and Central America.  Carney brilliantly introduces the courageous daily struggle each of these women face as they share their loss and hope that comes with leaving their home countries to improve their lives and the lives of those they left behind.

Carney takes us on a remarkable journey that is more than just about food. Each woman’s story elaborates on the daily struggles of dealing with poor living and working conditions, low wages, abusive relationships, and motherhood. However, these are just a few of the prominent themes. The greatest contradiction is these women left to escape to escape food insecurity only to resume this suffering once again across borders. Carney’s location of where her research focuses on is another compelling contradiction-California’s Santa Barbara County.  She describes this unique location as the “hunger in the land of plenty” despite the large agricultural sector there. Beyond the scenic beaches and expansive wineries, there continue to be wide wealth disparities. It is here where one in five residents live below the federal poverty line, and a quarter of the residents rely on private food aid. For these women, food insecurity affects every facet of their lives as health, social, and material challenges continue to interfere with these women’s ability to feed themselves and their families they have left behind.

The overarching theme uniting these women is the narrative of suffering and its varying dimensions. Through interviews, Carney shows us the relationship these women have to food, both literally and metaphorically, and how it reflects the broader struggles each face. She also introduces the term gendered suffering. In this context she shows us how suffering is related to the pressure to feed and care for others, and more than often this aspect is often overlooked in migration studies. Her main point relating to this term is to reveal how the US food system differentially treats women in their efforts to promote food security through programs such as food literacy training. This form of paternalistic action ends up doing more harm than good. State agencies and non-governmental organizations actually undermine women’s autonomy as they focus on conditioning recipients to subscribe to a set of beliefs, desires, feelings which are marketed as essential for establishing food security. However, this could not be further from actual reality as these institutions end up continuing to perpetuate inequalities and food insecurity and women and people of color are often the recipients that experience this continuous suffering..

Along that vein, Carney also makes a compelling argument about the “corporatization” of food banks and why food insecurity continues to persist in places like Santa Barbara County. She exposes a deceptive side of food banks as a result of their special interests. As a result, many of these food banks do not help those in greatest need. We find out from the experiences of some of these women that many of these so called non-profit organizations have strong partnerships with large corporations and private food aid groups. The result of such partnerships continue to complicate access for marginalized groups such as the women in Carney’s research due to the bureaucracy of the system.

After reading this book, one will not look at food the same way as we are encouraged to look at food not only as a symbol of hope and social connection, but as a fundamental human right. Her research is timely as we are faced with the many complexities and challenges of current policies on immigration. Carney closes the book by standing firm on this contentious issue as she advocates for the addition of food insecurity to the list of reasons an immigrant can seek authorized entry into the U.S. This issue can no longer be ignored as human lives are on the line as food becomes more of a political weapon than daily nourishment.

Despite the academic overtones in this book, Carney effectively illustrates the heroism of these women in their journey towards a better life. She does not diminish their voices and each chapter gives them greater agency despite the larger forces that dehumanize them. Ultimately, she makes a strong argument for the need to place greater attention on food insecurity as a relevant issue in migration policies. Carney clearly articulates this relevancy by showing these these women as activists in their own right despite not being fully heard by those in power.