Shipyard Gals
Rosie the Riveter presents an iconic and powerful image celebrating American women’s contributions to victory in World War II. But behind the Norman Rockwell painting, the real women who built ships and planes in 1944 faced sexism, racism, and every other ugly “ism” that is an inseparable part of history.
Shipyard Gals tells that story through the lives of three women who come to work in a West Coast shipyard at the height of wartime production: Elena, a journalist turned welder fleeing political violence in El Salvador; Rachel, a nurse facing home-grown antisemitism even as her brother fights Nazis in Europe; and Ruby Mae, a Black riveter helping support her family recently arrived from Baton Rouge. Their stories link in the desperate push to build ships and win the war, and the horror of an ammunition explosion that kills hundreds of overworked and undertrained Black sailors. The story is told from the rotating points-of-view of the three main characters, an ambitious choice given their very diverse lived experiences. For me, this did not always come across as natural and immersive. Similarly, some minor anachronisms in the dialogue keep the book from fully inhabiting its time period—words like “racist” and “toxic” rather than the more period-appropriate “bigoted” or “prejudiced.”
But these are only distractions to the important truth that this book speaks. It is no spoiler to reveal that justice is never quite served for the victims of the Port Chicago disaster, and that the experiences of three very different women in 1944 are not nearly as rosy as a painting.
