History in the Attic: Search for Roots in Ramabai Espinet’s The Swinging Bridge

In most of diaspora literature there is an attempt to retrieve the past. This makes one measure time in many ways, different calendars, change seasons, past encounters narrated through wars, defeats, and disasters. It remembered family history, ancestral heritage, nostalgia, memory even national interaction portrays immigrants caught flight memories, relationships images. The relocation has its disgust for thing or other. author live reminiscences, a collective representing symbolic relationship between present. Swinging Bridge by Ramabai Espinet chronicles multiple exiles that are part Indian experience Caribbean Canada two figures from past- great grandmother Gainder other present - Mona, protagonist. novel commemorates maternal roots routes Indo-Caribbean history establishing subjectivity widows young girls India who crossed Kala Pani (Black waters Atlantic) search new beginnings Trinidad great-grand-daughter engages existential quest selfhood Canada. Grief motivates flood personal memories as Mona begins remember intimate details life had been repressed under cover migration. Bits pieces past, fragments scattered various places, childhood overheard conversations, prayer songs, all come together attic. She explores secret photographs letters giving her powerful voice culture, family, fellow women herself. Mona’s drive document enables reveal family’s carefully guarded secrets- domestic violence, drunken rampages, sexual abuse, illegitimate children, AIDS. paper seeks analyse novel’s diasporic contents find out whether this at retrieval brings about perception today’s generation. light problems plural society calling need mutual respect- avoid conflict situations effective tracing novel.