The True Nanny Diaries is a debut novel from Nandi, a writer with years of experience as a journalist. Like her gritty protagonist, fate placed her temporarily in the role of a domestic worker. It is from her vantage point at ground zero of this “invisible world” that we gain this colorful, fictionalized work, The True Nanny Diaries.
When the protagonist, Valdi West, left her native Trinidad & Tobago to study at Columbia University on a scholarship, she never expected to be babysitting to survive as an undocumented immigrant in America.
Twenty years later, Valdi refuses to consider her derailed life. Instead, she focuses her razor sharp intuition and cutting wit on her babysitting clique: old lady Madam Lucian, who supplements her meager babysitting wages, by selling homemade bread from her Brooklyn apartment; flighty Monica, who's not above throwing in a few "perks" into her Green Card marriage; and Ava, her one time confidant, who outgrows her friends as graduation, a government job, and legal American status, seem all within her grasp.
Set further and further adrift from her dream of becoming an award-winning writer, Valdi’s life becomes hopelessly entangled in the unending demands of her latest employers, a dysfunctional East Side couple with a five-year-old boy. Valdi’s chance encounter with her estranged, wildly successful, twin sister, while minding the boy, pushes her to the brink. She has two choices: sink or swim. The True Nanny Diaries is published by Bread for brick Publishing. For ordering information:
About the Author
Nandi was born in London and grew-up in Trinidad & Tobago. Her writing has been published for almost 20 years, most extensively in Canada. Her literary essay “Still Shipwrecked,”
