Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Silver Women: How Black Women's Labor Made the Panama Canal

The Silver Women: How Black Women's Labor Made the Panama Canal

Flores-Villalobos, Joan
Ramirez, Marisol

Audio Book

General Latin American HistoryGeneral World HistoryWomen's Studies

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN13: 9798874647063
Publisher: Tantor Audio
Published: May 30 2023
Language: English
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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General Latin American History

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