And They Took My Milk!, an article by Professor and Center on Race, Law and Justice Director Bennett Capers, was published in the California Western Law Review. Professor Capers’ article reviews the book Skimmed: Breastfeeding, Race, and Injustice, by Andrea Freeman.
Part I of this Review provides a brief overview of Freeman’s book, focusing in particular on the interplay between the Fultz sisters’ story and current efforts to direct Black women towards formula. Indeed, the interplay may be greater than Freeman lets on. Part II offers questions that I selfishly wish Freeman explored and that I hope she will take up in the future as she continues her “pioneering theory of food oppression.” For example, left unasked in Skimmed is the question of why feminist groups have not done more to champion breastfeeding protections for all. Similarly, unasked is perhaps a more fundamental question: Is breastfeeding feminist?
It is inevitable to have questions that one wishes for the author to address. But my questions—my wish list of questions, if you will—are not meant to take away from the book’s importance or its lessons. Freeman makes clear race matters. And, if I may borrow from William Faulkner, Freeman shows that “[t]he past is never dead. It’s not even past.” Most importantly, Freeman demonstrates that Sethe’s cry to Paul D., in Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel, Beloved, is a cry many Black women could make. “And they took my milk!”