This reading list includes books about Panama and its people and by Panamanian writers. Panama is a country on the Central American isthmus, bordering Colombia and Costa Rica and the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and home to diverse communities for millennia.

Silver People: Voices from the Panama Canal by Margarita Engle

One hundred years ago, the world celebrated the opening of the Panama Canal, which connected the world’s two largest oceans and signaled America’s emergence as a global superpower. It was a miracle, this path of water where a mountain had stood—and creating a miracle is no easy thing. Thousands lost their lives, and those who survived worked under the harshest conditions for only a few silver coins a day.

From the young "silver people" whose back-breaking labor built the Canal to the denizens of the endangered rainforest itself, this is the story of one of the largest and most difficult engineering projects ever undertaken.