Overview

In The Silver Women, Joan Flores-Villalobos argues that Black West Indian women made the Panama Canal construction possible by providing the indispensable everyday labor of social reproduction. West Indian women built a provisioning economy that fed, housed, and cared for the segregated Black West Indian labor force, in effect subsidizing the construction effort and the racial calculus that separated pay in silver for Black workers and gold for white Americans. But while also subject to racial discrimination and segregation, West Indian women mostly worked outside the umbrella of US canal authorities. They did not hold contracts, had little access to official services and wages, and received pay in both silver and gold. From this position, they found ways to skirt, and at times subvert, the legal, moral, and economic parameters imperial authorities sought to impose on the migrant workforce. West Indian women developed important strategies of claims-making, kinship, community building, and market adaptation that helped them navigate the contradictions and violence of the US empire. These strategies of social reproduction nurtured further West Indian migrations, linking Panama to places like Harlem and Santiago de Cuba. The Silver Women is thus a history of Black women's labor of social reproduction as integral to US imperial infrastructure, the global Caribbean diaspora, and women's own survival.

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Joan Flores-Villalobos is assistant professor of history at the University of Southern California. Marisol Ramirez was born and raised in Panama Canal Zone. Marisol trained as an actress at Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University, where she earned an MFA under the direction of William Esper. Marisol has worked consistently in film, TV, and audiobooks on such projects as The Shield, The Rookie, Hawaii Five-0, and James Wan's The Curse of La Llorona. Some of Marisol's favorite audiobooks include Ingrid Rojas Contreras's Fruit of the Drunken Tree and Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Todos los cuentos. Marisol has lived and studied in Spain and England.

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