What’s in Store for the New Year?

A Blessed and Regenerating New Year to all our readers and supporters!

by Lydia M. Reid

As we approach our second year with our Silver People Heritage site we are conscious of our need to make it easier to use and for it to be more inclusive of the information and stories we wish to share with you, our respected readers.  On that note we want to announce the addition of three new sections that promise to be closer to what we want this web site to be including features our readers have been asking for.

Speaking of Good Writing

John W. Evans, author of Songs and Stories of a Digger's Son

W. B. Garvey, author of Panama Fever, Digging Down Gold Mountain

by Lydia M. Reid

While we are on the subject of writers of our days as The Silver People of Panama, we are excited about two new books.  They were both written by authors of Westindian descent who give a precious view of the Panama of our forefathers’ era and fill in more gaps in our collective memory about who and what we really are.

Westindian Isthmian Journalism

Albert E. Bell, distinguished Editor and popular columnist who was attached to several of the leading Isthmian newspapers of the 1930's and 40's.

Ernest J. Jamieson, Colon news-hawk who was also Atlantic side Circulation Manager of The Nation.

by Lydia M. Reid

By the late 1940’s Panama, particularly the terminal cities of Panama and Colon, had become a magnet for some of the most gifted writers of the Anglo-Caribbean.  Many of these writers would have come from having exercised their writing abilities in newspapers and publications on the islands.  Some arrived in Panama at a very young age like Sydney A. Young, who sought to channel his intellectual prowess into a viable writing career.

Early Beginnings of Silver Literature

Oldtimers at an intense game of checkers.

The early writings amongst the Silver People of Panama could have started when correspondence was sent back home to the West Indies by, primarily, Westindian men who served that purpose during the mid 19^th century and would continue to serve as message bearers for the working class Silver Men far into the early decades of the 20^th century. We as researchers, however, would not get a glimpse of those writings until much later in our lives, although they were published in the newspapers of their times in Panama during the late 1930′s and up until the late 1950′s.

The Road to Westindian Literature- Some Thoughts

The Black Studies thinker and Writer.

The road to the placing of real Black Literature in the hands of Black and Latin American children has been paved with much difficulty and many disheartening experiences, at least in my own experience. The age for our people, the Panamanian Westindian, to gain that realization of the harm that such deprivation causes, like not having literature depicting our own stories and our own experiences available from early childhood, is something I have been observing, and lamenting, since I was a young child.