The Swinging Bridge Quotes

“January 15, 1995.
Lately, words have been assailing me. Words like ashes, cocoyea brooms, sem, chataigne, roti, chunkaying, lepaying, washing wares. Everyday domestic words from long ago, a far-off time and place. Other words fly past me like spectres and they want something – words like gloaming, lovevine, lianas, pois-doux, zaboca, mango vere, pomme-cythere, Manzanilla, calypso, j’ouvert morning, ginga, carilee, googoonie, chuntah, calchul. Patois words and Hindi words.
Words are ghosts, ancestors on this side. They are not symbols. They are alive and sensate – full of flesh and stone and jagged edges. Word jumbies.”
― Ramabai Espinet, The Swinging Bridge: A Novel

“If you happen to be born into an Indian family, an Indian family from the Caribbean, migratory, never certain of the terrain, that’s how life falls down around you. It’s close and thick and sheltering, its ugly and violent secrets locked inside the family walls. The outside encroaches, but the ramparts are strong, and once you leave it you have no shelter and no ready skills for finding a different one. I found that out after years of trying.”
― Ramabai Espinet, The Swinging Bridge: A Novel

“Our hearts flew up to heaven,, and all the soot and flying dust of burning cane vanished in the smoke fires of hell while ours ascended skywards, washed in the blood of the lamb.”
― Ramabai Espinet, The Swinging Bridge: A Novel