Caribbean Book Review…A book’s sober look at West Indian babysitters in New York

Aug 19, 2012 News

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By Dr Glenville Ashby

The True Nanny Diaries, a compelling novel cloaked in the naked reality of immigrant life in New York. “Diaries,” written by London born, (but “Trinidadianised”) Nandi Keyi, is a literary milestone—colourful, imaginative and provocative – blending vernacular and prose with stunning ease and poignancy. Nandi’s cascading and relentless style befits the mercurial temperament of the book’s troubled protagonist Valdi, who wrestles with her lot in life—being a babysitter for a rich and dysfunctional white family in Manhattan.
Valdi’s prosecutorial obsession is turned inward. Her once promising life as an Ivy League graduate student comes to a perfunctory end, and she is forced to work in a position she despises. She represents one of countless West Indian women who are part of an ever-burgeoning domestic workforce.
Valdi is different. She is bitter, brash and intellectually biting – with a dash of fatalism. She is a provocateur, a contrarian. Sadly, she can find little support from her fellow West Indian domestic workers, most of whom are thankful for their white benefactors.
But there is more to the overriding plot. Along with the travails of domestic workers, is the brilliantly captured culture of West Indians living in Brooklyn. It is hardly celebratory, and may explain Valdi’s obsession to “liberate” herself from the madness that bedevils black folks. The “ass-ketchers” on Utica Avenue make her yearn for a decent place to live among little white shoemakers, shopkeepers and pharmacists. ”The kind of place that Ernie and Bert and all the other Sesame Street puppets will be proud to sing about,” she reflects.
On the subway her revulsion never abates as “a reeking, hulking vagrant, smelling like fresh vomit entered the carriage…”
Valdi yearns for better circumstances to avoid the harrowing underground niche, where the undocumented reside. In the end she is left to ponder “what if?”
In this foreign land, dreams are unfulfilled, dashed. And it all began with a life-altering choice – to trade the familial protection of the tropics for the impersonal character of New York. Adapt and survive, Valdi and friends must. With strollers in tow, they congregate informally, comforting and egging each other on, as they formulate new strategies to deal with their employers. But the “El Dorado” stories told back home of life in America are just that—tales. They are forced to swallow their pride and shelve their dignity. The imprudence and screaming contempt of kids, they are forced to bear.
The unforgiving demands of the job are always compounded by their illegal status. In fact, no one could better explain it better than Valdi. ”Remember you do not live in New York or Washington or Idaho or Vegas,” she tells her friend, “you live in illegal, the fifty-first state.”
Indeed “illegal” is the leveler of so many immigrants. A UWI graduate, Valdi learns this truism – the hard way.
Despite theses hurdles, Valdi’s friends – Monica, Ava and Madam Lucien do not flinch. A generation of children is left behind, motherless – all for a few hundred dollars weekly. Then again, that income elasticises to support these very children. It is an inexorable dilemma.
But Valdi is unswerving – her academic derailment feeding off her. She erupts, repeatedly – challenging others to see the brutality of the system.
In the end, “Diaries” is a depth analysis of much more than the plight of illegal immigrants and “Nannyism.” It tells a sordid tale of racism, sexism and class. Even among babysitters, there is a curious hierarchy—with those who are on the East Side of Manhattan, like Valdi and friends – enjoying a self-proclaimed higher rank than their West Side counterparts.
And in an unbridled cuss out on the streets of Harlem, West Indian-Black American rivalry rears its ugly head. Valdi, the victim of a soul shaking insult—”You so and so West Indians cane cutting niggas!” painfully refrains from taking a perfidious swipe at her abuser.
“I was about to call her a cotton-picking nigga…”
Surely, “Diaries’ may not put an end to the exodus of young bright West Indian women to the US, but it should trigger a candid discussion on an occupation that only recently required the intervention of the state to protect workers. Still it remains an occupation mired in complexities and wrought with psychological perils, so well articulated in this artful work. [email protected]

Dr Glenvile Ashby
Literary critic
The Caribbean Arts Review
BOOK INFO:
• The True Nanny Diaries by Nandi Keyi, 2009
• Bread for Brick, Brooklyn, New York
• ISBN: 978-0-615-220060-4
• Available at www.breadforbrickpublishing.com; Amazon.com
Rating*****: Highly recommended

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