ESPINET, RAMABAI — Swinging Bridge

Toronto, Harper Perennial. 2004, 1st Canadian Edition. (ISBN: 0006485952) Trade Paperback. Book, The Swinging Bridge is a moving story of race and displacement that carries the reader effortlessly from 19th-century India to the cane fields of Trinidad, and the contemporary urban centres of North America. Mona, a young Indo-Caribbean woman who grew up in Trinidad, must finally confront not only her own turbulent past, but the secrets of a winding family history begun on the Indian continent almost two centuries ago. A richly layered novel that is steeped in the lyrical rhythms of Caribbean life, The Swinging Bridge explores the immigrant experience with compassion and humour, giving voice to a heroine whose universal search for self is revealed in worlds marked by violence and shame, but also by love and respect. The fiction debut from a writer with a fresh and unique talent, The Swinging Bridge resonates long after the final pagE Ramabai Espinet was born in San Fernando, Trinidad and Tobago. She is an Indo-Trinidadian poet, novelist, essayist, and critic from Trinidad and Tobago. She attended York University in Toronto, Canada before earning a Ph.D. at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad. As New.