The True Nanny Diaries

In her novel The True Nanny Diaries, a book about four women, linked by dreams, who find friendship in a New York City playground, author Nandi reveals the pain and difficulties of being an undocumented immigrant nanny in New York City.

Commitment:  The True Nanny Diaries is a novel about four foreign-born women who work as nannies in Manhattan. What inspired you to write this book?

Nandi:  When I found myself babysitting, I couldn't believe that I was engaged in a task that seemed so incongruous to my destiny. Only I didn't know what my destiny was or that I would be moved to write about not only my experience of being a nanny, but the experience of being a nanny. During my days on the playground, I was still fortunate enough to be pursuing a degree in literature. I found being the nanny of two boys very frustrating because they made my job very difficult.

My British Literature professor suggested I write about my experience. She said I was talented and well positioned in the trenches with nannies to write this story. She said that people pay for this type of ethnographical research. I found myself making notes on scraps of paper. Not with the intention of writing a novel but to process the nuances I observed in this particular and peculiar labor arrangement between white women and black women. The True Nanny Diaries was most of all inspired by the friendships among Caribbean women nannies, and by their ability to just laugh stuff off. I think I was inspired to write this novel because it was one that I would have liked to read: a novel about tough, real women, who live every day climbing this mountain called "America." Though some may fall, the journey never stops.

Commitment:  The True Nanny Diaries, like The Nanny Diaries, is a story of The Privileged vs. The Working Class. But your novel takes the socio-economic differences a step further. What makes The True Nanny Diaries truer than The Nanny Diaries?

Nandi:  It is certainly a valid experience to be a young, white, working-class, female college student babysitting for extra cash - as is the protagonist's situation in The Nanny Diaries. However, it is an invariably more life altering and sometimes horrific experience to be a middle-aged, black, female, poor, illegal immigrant who works in a series of potentially perilous, unregulated babysitting jobs to survive, as is the protagonist's case in my novel, The True Nanny Diaries.

The situations of the nannies in New York City fit most of my protagonist's circumstances. This means that my novel paints an equally valid landscape of the lives and experiences of many immigrant domestic workers who have no choice but to be employed in this field, which is devoid of labor regulations and standards. Being a nanny means that details of one's employment are concocted based on the employers' whims and the level of their commitment to fairness; in short, their humaneness, their integrity, their personality.

Though some immigrant domestic workers are treated fairly and respectfully in the workplace, the fact remains that their purposeful exclusion from The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) puts them at the mercy of their employers. The result is that treatment and wage standards are erratic. Hence, a character in The True Nanny Diaries gets ten dollars extra added to an already ridiculously low salary when her employers have a new baby. This detail was lifted from the real-life experience of a Caribbean nanny whom I befriended on a playground in New York City. Likewise, sick days, advance notice of termination, and pay for all hours worked are at the discretion of employers.

While The Nanny Diaries is a story of The Privileged vs. The Working Class, The True Nanny Diaries takes the discussion a step further. It clearly delineates that color, nationality and immigration status are critically important and pervasive factors that cannot be separated or glossed over in the majority of stories about nannies in New York City. Thus, for me, the crux of the situation lies in the fact that the protagonist in The Nanny Diaries can choose to do something else if and when she so decides. Her ability to choose is also predicated on the color of her skin; she can more easily claim legitimate kinship - and privilege - with the dominant class. However, the story of the women in The True Nanny Diaries represents the lived reality of most women employed as nannies, maids and elder care workers in New York City. For them the right to choose is often not an option. For most of them, as my protagonist, Valdi West, says, "It's sink or swim." Hence, the choice of title for my novel: The True Nanny Diaries.

Commitment:  The True Nanny Diaries also highlights the fact that domestic workers are excluded from most basic legal protections such as overtime pay and social security that other American workers are entitled to. Were you aware of this injustice prior to beginning your novel?

Nandi:  I was not aware that domestic workers are excluded from most basic legal protections prior to beginning The True Nanny Diaries. Before my stint as a nanny, I never thought about domestic workers. It was simply not in my paradigm. When I began babysitting, however, I was privy to so many conversations among nannies about unfair conditions in the workplace that seemed to be the norm, not the exception.

With research came the realization that laws, and the lack thereof, basically give employers carte blanche over not only the labor of domestic workers, but also their lives. The babysitting came first; the novel came later. So the themes of injustice that thread through the novel come as a result of my direct experience as a nanny and with nannies.

More reflection and research made me painfully aware that the experiences of present-day Caribbean women parallel the experiences of Black-American, Mexican-American, Native American, Latina and Asian women in America. These women, who migrated from rural to urban centers in America and other countries, nurtured the children of white women who, benefiting predominantly from the women's movement of the 20th century, moved outside the home into occupations other than caregiver.

For Black-American women, who have nurtured the children of their enslavers since the inception of the practice of American enslavement in the first decade of the 17th century, little has changed. Mammies have morphed into nannies, in spite of the "abolition" of enslavement in 1865. This constant, supported by their deliberate exclusion from the NLRA signed into law in 1935 by former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, has gone a long way in ensuring that this unequal aspect of the socio-political balance has remained largely the same in America since then.

Commitment:  The protagonist, Valdi West, is an immigrant from Trinidad who came to the United States of America to study but, upon the cancellation of her scholarship, finds herself an undocumented immigrant. How common is that slide?

Nandi:  This slide is very common among immigrant students. Usually, the descent begins when parents can no longer sustain payment of university fees and upkeep for their children abroad. Foreign students are then barred from their colleges until overdue tuition is paid. With no work authorization, students seek work "under the table," hoping to earn enough to get back into school and complete their degrees.

Sometimes this dream is not to be. In the case of Valdi West, 20 years later she was still on the playground unable to find herself. Many women working as babysitters in America were qualified teachers, nurses or other professionals in their home countries. America's cultural imperialism, spread through magazines, movies and videos, lures many a nation's brightest citizens to a lifestyle that few Americans enjoy. Many Americans suggest sardonically that immigrants who dislike American values or have problems with life in America should simply go back home. But for someone like Valdi West, the protagonist of The True Nanny Diaries, there is that very real and human factor called embarrassment. How does a promising student return home without qualifications?  And if, after "failing" in America - not because of a lack of skill or will, but because of a lack of resources - that student returns home, how does one retrofit oneself to function in a changed socio-economic landscape? Invariably, immigrant students who slide stay here in America. They wait, like my protagonist, for "some damn thing to happen."

Commitment:  As an illegal alien, Valdi's employment and education options are limited.  Did you intend to highlight this fact in your novel?

Nandi:  The character of Valdi, like the other characters in The True Nanny Diaries, wrote themselves. I was often amazed during the process of working on this novel by the peculiarity of situations that arose that I never consciously reflected upon.  I never consciously set out to create a platform to advance the discussion or highlight immigration issues but, by virtue of who these characters are, it was inevitable. The agendas of domestic worker advocates and immigrant advocates cannot be separated.

Commitment:  The True Nanny Diaries is a story of sadness and resilience but it offers no Hollywood endings. Did you know how you would end this novel when you first started writing?

Nandi:  Perhaps midway into the process of writing this novel I had a beautiful, pat Hollywood ending waiting. Three quarters of the way into the process I became anxious to get to the end so I could apply such an ending. Then something happened. Try as I might to impose a fairy tale ending on the novel it would not fit. So the "happy ever after" ending fell on the cutting room floor. The ending as it stands - one of sadness, acceptance, awakening and resilence - was what my characters demanded.

Commitment:  Your award-winning play, Light the Flambeaux, was featured in the Inaugural Caribbean Regional Drama Festival, and your play, Man You Mus' was a finalist in Theatre British Columbia's National Playwriting Competition.  Is this your first novel?

Nandi:  The True Nanny Diaries is my first novel.

Commitment:  You are from Trinidad. Are any of the characters in The True Nanny Diaries based on people you know or experiences you have heard of?

Nandi:  There are elements of Valdi I recognize in myself. While the novel is not autobiographical, I identify with Valdi more than any other character in The True Nanny Diaries. The characters Madam Lucian, Ava and Monica are not based on any particular persons, but they all have threads of real nannies I met while in domestic service.
 
Commitment:  What are you working on now?

Nandi:  My next novel, I think, will begin with a line from The True Nanny Diaries: "At the age of 19, Beulah's fifth abortion shocked her body into menopause." This novel is currently percolating in my mind.

To learn more about Nandi or The True Nanny Diaries, visit her website, www.breadforbrickpublishing.com.

To purchase The True Nanny Diaries, click here.