Brooklyn, New York/ August 20, 2009 - The True Nanny Diaries, a ground-breaking novel, told from the vantage point of black women babysitters in New York City, has been entered into the canon of Caribbean literature.

Penned by Nandi, a writer with years of experience as a journalist, the novel explores the predicament of a Caribbean woman, who finds herself in the untenable position of being “illegal” in America. According to Senator Kevin Parker of New York City, who has written a sterling introduction to the novel, “Nandi candidly and shrewdly delineates the grinding demands on the lives of domestic workers in New York.”

The plot revolves around Valdi West, who left her native Trinidad & Tobago to study at Columbia University on a scholarship, but ends up babysitting to survive. Twenty years later, Valdi refuses to consider her derailed life. Instead, she focuses her razor sharp intuition and cutting wit on her babysitting clique. She befriends old lady Madam Lucian, who is supplementing her meager babysitting wages, and financing a house-building project, by selling homemade bread from her Brooklyn apartment. Valdi is also preoccupied with flighty Monica, who's not above stirring a few "perks" into her Green Card marriage. Last but not least, Valdi is disturbed by Ava, her one time confidant, who outgrows her babysitting 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 Manhattan couple with a five-year-old son. 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.

Nandi notes that The True Nanny Diaries is not only about the workplace challenges but about the hopes, dreams and aspirations that domestic workers share. “These are not weak women oppressed by the proverbial big, bad wolf. These are real women, with imperfections of their own, finding their way as immigrants, and as friends.” 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 The True Nanny Diaries evolved.

To celebrate the launch of this seminal work, Bread for Brick Publishing, is throwing a book launch party for Nandi on August 21, 2009 at Fiddlers’ Café, 704 Washington Avenue, Brooklyn NY, from 7:00pm – 11:00pm. Nandi will put her theater skills to work with dramatized readings from the novel. The evening with all feature acting, and performances! Refreshments will be served.

Nandi, formerly Bianca Jacob, writing has been published for the past 20 years, most extensively in Canada. Her seminal essay, “Still Shipwrecked,” was published by the international peer review journal Changing English: Studies in Research and Culture (Taylor and Francis). She studied at York University (Toronto) and the City University of New York.

For more information about ordering The True Nanny Diaries, check out www.breadforbrickpublishing.com, email: info@breadforbrickpublishing.com, or call (347) 636-0079.