Caribbean Women’s Use of Susu, Partner, Sol, and Boxhand as Quiet Resistance

Mutual aid and coming together has been a way of life for the African diaspora since enslavement and the legacy of it that continues in everyday life. The Black diaspora, and especially Black women, contend with vile forms of racism and exclusion in business and society, but this is not what defines Blacks in the Americas. This chapter focuses on Caribbean women who organize rotating savings and credit associations (ROSCAs), which are cooperative banking systems embedded in social relationships. This work draws on J. K. Gibson-Graham’s community economies theory, as well as Caribbean and Black liberation theories, to understand the business exclusion of Black women. The empirical interviews with hundreds of Black Caribbean women in Jamaica, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, and Haiti show the purposeful way in which they organize ROSCAs to be considerate of people’s social lives in relation to their business needs. These women, in choosing cooperation, are quietly resisting commercial and individualized forms of banking. In this chapter, the author argues that Caribbean women organize Susu, Sol, Partner, and Boxhand, all names for ROSCAs, use banking cooperatives alongside conventional banks as a way to quietly push against commercial and elitist financial institutions.