Seth Holmes
Seth Holmes is the author of Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies. A physician and anthropologist, Holmes studied Triqui migrant farmworkers in order to understand the relationship among immigration, healthcare, public policy, social hierarchy, and preventable…
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Samuel
Samuel is one of Holmes’s closest Triqui friends at the Tanaka Brothers Farm. Holmes stays with Samuel and his extended family in his hometown of San Miguel, as well as in California’s Central Valley…
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Abelino
Abelino is one of Holmes’s three main case studies at the Tanaka Brothers Farm. He’s a Triqui man who starts suffering severe knee pain after several years working as a strawberry picker. This pain…
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Crescencio
One of Holmes’s three case studies at the Tanaka Brothers Farm, Crescencio suffers from severe headaches that begin whenever his supervisors yell insults like “stupid Oaxacan” at him. This is a clear illustration of…
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Bernardo
Bernardo is an older Triqui man who started migrating to the United States for work in the 1980s and was granted U.S. residency under an amnesty program. Ever since, he divides his time between his…
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Get the entire Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies LitChart as a printable PDF.
Samantha
Samantha is a white administrative assistant at the Tanaka Brothers Farm who helps translate and interpret between English and Spanish. Even though she can communicate with them, she still thinks Mexican workers are “‘dirty’ and…
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Shelly
Shelly is a white manager at the Tanaka Brothers Farm who is married to one of its owners, Rob Tanaka. One of the farm’s more egregiously racist workers, Shelly supervises the white teenagers who…
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J.R.
J.R. is an old white man in California’s Central Valley who voices numerous racist beliefs about Latinx people. For instance, he says that Mexican migrant workers are “filthy” but thinks farm owners shouldn’t provide them…
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The Triqui Migrants’ Coyote
An anonymous coyote helps Holmes and his Triqui companions cross the U.S.-Mexico border. He lets Holmes cross for free because of his noble intentions, while charging much poorer migrants thousands of dollars to help them…
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Scott
Scott is a crop manager who struggles to manage field workers at the Tanaka Brothers Farm. Like most white workers at the farm, he both recognizes structural violence and naturalizes it through symbolic violence…
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John Tanaka
John Tanaka is the co-owner of the Tanaka Brothers Farm, along with his brother Rob Tanaka. Although he is well-meaning and charitable in some ways, John Tanaka exploits his workers to stay competitive in…
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Minor Characters
Rob Tanaka
Rob Tanaka is Shelly’s husband, John Tanaka’s brother, and the co-owner of the Tanaka Brothers Farm. He manages all the fruit production and tells Holmes about how difficult it is to stay competitive with industrial farms while treating workers in a “fair and consistent” way.
