Annotation Guide, Part 2 | theswingingbridge

Part II: Manahambre Road

Historical Archive & Silencing (H.A): Red

Migration (M): Gray

Oppression--Cultural (C.O.), Gender (G.O.), Sexual (S.O.): Pink

The Swinging Bridge (S.B.): Blue

Land (L): Black

Kala pani (117) –Kala Pani in Historical Context
St. Helena (117) –St. Helena Island in Significant Locations
Millions of Africans were driven westward to provide labour for the sugar and cotton plantations that fattened the purses of Europe (117) –Usine Ste. Madeleine in Significant Locations
That forced marriage of Africa with Europe occurred on Caribbean soil, creating Creole plant and animal hybrids of astonishing beauty and hardiness (117) –Cultural Hybridity in Historical Context
H.A. Gainder age 13 (117)
The Artist with its cargo of coolies (118) –Kala Pani in Historical Context
S.O. Jeevan had killed a white sailor who grabbed Gainder and tried to fondle her breasts as she was making her way one night from the upper deck to the women’s quarters on the aft side of the ship (118)
S.O. Carib girl- lush and full-bottomed (120)
H.A. Leaning against that old pilotric and waiting for Bess to come down the hill, I was assailed by an unimaginable amount of desolation. When she reached me, tears were flowing freely down my cheeks. There were no words (122)
H.A. Family was not just breeding and reproducing—it was a work of art in itself, as carved and sculpted as any other legacy that one could leave behind (123)
L Legislation about inheriting property (123)
Trinidad ranks third in AIDS capitals of the world (124) –AIDS in Historical Context
H.A. Several rolls of film and a few instant snapshots…through her eyes I saw the property’s possibilities and knew that Kello would be pleased (126)
H.A. Prayer over family (130)
H.A. Oral historian…she had started her education there in 1925 and never spoke of it without using the word privilege (134)
Presbyterians (134) –Cultural Hybridity in Historical Context
C.O. Discarding their Indian name of Sankar (134)
H.A. The tale of Kowsilia (135-136)
H.A. We all looked at each other in silence. We never discussed it; better to forget such a tale and get on with our own, more modern lives. But there was no denying the powerful sense of menace in the air (135)
Government exhibition examination (135) –The New Curriculum in Historical Context
G.O. To us, failure meant early marriage and a life bound to a washtub, scrubbing dirty clothes and smelly diapers (135)
G.O. A chance. I had a chance, but I saw around me many who didn’t…I knew what their lives would be—selling cloth in Syrian stores for low wages, taking typing courses that would end nowhere, getting married to their young, poor boyfriends or being married to men their families chose. Lives stripped of love maybe, or lives of poverty and hope, always on the lookout for a chance. Or maybe just ordinary, reasonably happy lives (136)
G.O. For all the chances and opportunities it offered, high school was full of false promises (136)
G.O. Comfortable in my uncomfortable new uniform, I took strong, certain steps, knowing what was expected of me (136)
S.B. Be careful (136-137)
S.B. Careless, swinging (137-139)
C.O. There must have been some reason why the stories circulated only among the Indian girls (138)
S.O. Slackness was talking to boys, writing letters to boys, having sex, doing the thing (139)
S.B. It could not show us how to swing carelessly, high over the trees and not get the violent push from behind (141)
S.O. Dirty Skirts Club (141)
S.O. Inspection (141)
S.O. Love comics (142)
C.O. Miss Camilla Lee- “red” girl of mixed African/Chinese ancestry (143)
Independence from Britain- “all ah we is one” (144) –Eric Williams in Historical Context
C.O. I realized later, long after La Pastora, that racial differences probably led Miss Lee to view our behavior as predictable and deplorable. There was talk about how Indian girls were hot hot from small—no wonder they had to marry them off as children, and no wonder wife beating and chopping was so common among those people. They were not civilized or “creolized” enough. They did not reach the approved standard of proper Trinidad society. We were hot coolie girls who had to be brought in line and who, at twelve or thirteen, were already showing signs of wantonness (145)
C.O. Country coolies (145)
S.O. But if race was not part of our exploration, sex certainly was (145)
S.O. What we wanted out of life: Glamour, Travel, Money, Love, a Career…marriage we considered only vaguely, although falling in love was high on the list (145)
S.O. Dirty Skirts (146)
S.B. Swinging (147)
L Property (150)
H.A. Generation (151)
H.A. I felt a powerful sense of belonging (153)
H.A. I had given up on Cecile Fatiman (164)
L Kello hoped that, in time, Joey and Linda would come to understand the value of the land in Manahambre Road (165)
S.O. Hatred of Uncle Baddall (166)
S.O. Untouched (168)
S.O. Taxi ride (173)
G.O. “In life you have to choose. You can’t have everything” (176)
G.O. He wanted me to have a career and grow into an independent woman (177)
Cannes Brûlées (178) –Cannes Brûlée in Glossary and Usine Ste. Madeleine in Significant Locations
G.O. Shift dress (179-180)
G.O. Escape through education (180)
G.O. The thought of marriage or domestic life still filled me with irrational feelings of dread, even towards Roddy with whom I was deeply involved (181)
Marriage with its eternal domestic trappings seemed like certain death (181)
C.O. Red nigger (185)
C.O. Most of my Indian friends had the same problem, but we suffered in silence. It was yet another shameful Indian secret to be kept from our Creole friends and those of other races who would hold us up to ridicule for being backward (186)
G.O. And husbands too, beating and kicking wives (187)
G.O. It was a puzzle, the sheer violence of that time. Perhaps our parents were convinced that in newer, freer world, with new rules being invented overnight, safeguarding their daughters’ honour had become much more complicated. Now I can see that not the least of the complications would have been the new freedoms being sought by those same betraying daughters, especially those like me and Susie and the other Dirty Skirts, wanting all, determined to assert our right (187)
G.O. Wife and mother (189)
H.A. Journal (189)
H.A. “My wealth is my children” (190)
C.O. Movies starred white people and that was that. The stories, the ways of life, we could always adapt to our own lives (191)
G.O. “Before you study your books, you studying boy. And a Creole boy too! What will happen to you?” (192)
G.O. I planned never to marry and always to live a free life. I didn’t want any husband telling me what to do. Why was it that everybody had to have a husband? What was so great about that? As far as I could see, men had all the benefits of marriage and women had all the work, all the washing of pots and diapers and stinky babies’ bottoms (192)
C.O. Her parents disliked Kemal because he was Muslim (193)
Curriculum (194) – The New Curriculum in Historical Context
De Doctah (195) –Eric Williams in Historical Context
G.O. Bree hit Mona (196)
G.O. “I’ve thought about it since. All the work always fell on you. It just wasn’t fair” (200)
S.B. I recalled the swingbridge incident (201)
C.O. Coolie girl (201)
C.O. Race had hit me between the eyes much earlier than it had Kello. The first time I was called a coolie I was only about five years old (203)
A coolie was a nasty thing. I hated coolies (204)
M A settled life we never had (205)
C.O. Race (206-207)
C.O. But I couldn’t bear the talk, the disgrace to the family. It was a racial attitude, I admit that. That ‘one nation’ idea the new government was pushing was a direct attack on Indians’ (208-209)
S.B. Swing (213)
Two funerals were simultaneously in progress—the public one, and the private one that was between Matthew, Babs, Bess, and me (217) –Cultural Hybridity in Historical Context
C.O. But I grew interested in their language and how the years in Canada made little impact on the West Indianness of their speech (218-219)
G.O. My mother, Kello’s Muddie, she whom I have never known the way he did, as simply and directly…Muddie never wooed and won my love as she did with Kello. She didn’t have to; she simply fashioned me with her hands and sent me out into the world. Eascape was my goal; the means, her eloquent gift to me. And daily I witness how deeply my mother’s signature is written on my life. She signs herself in my walks through roads without end, through lengths of time longer than twine, in the click of a pot spoon, in the winding and knotting of silver threads around a too-fast bobbin, in the creation of a whole meal, a dress, a life, out of scraps of nothing (220)
C.O. Cuisine (221)
H.A. He told us that he was preparing for a trip to Trinidad and wanted to find tombstones, family sites, any kind of history that he could (226)
Jerningham Junction (226) –Jerningham Junction in Significant Locations
Whiteland (228) –Whiteland and Piparo in Significant Locations
G.O. Da-Da, the man she had stood by defiantly (231)
Calypso (232) –Calypso in Glossary
Jerningham Junction (232-233) –Jerningham Junction in Significant Locations
S.O. They say that memory protects us by burying terrible events, yet I remembered it vividly and without fear. I remembered it all. I had felt no sense of danger that night, but I had known something was wrong, something I could not stop, a secret part of life revealing itself while I sat there helpless, acquiescent, unwilling. I was eight years old, going to spend some of my holidays with Uncle Baddall and Auntie Vannie, being driven in his car late at night…everything had vanished into Jerningham Junction (235)
S.O. But I also felt a murderous rage toward him and hated the idea of being marked. I was sure that this nastiness had not happened to anyone else in my family or to any of my friends. Everyone else looked so clean and ordinary (236)

I still mourned the absence of Cecile Fatiman. I remained convinced of a symbolic connection between her sacrifice of the black pig on that lightning-struck night at Bois Caiman and in 1791 and the mass slaughter of the black Creole pig in this century and the ensuing ruin of the Haitian peasant (241) –Ties to the Past: Significance of Majie the Pig in Historical Context
The loss of the Creole pig was vital to the story of these brave women of Haiti (242) –Ties to the Past: Significance of Majie the Pig in Historical Context

C.O. Keep Canada White (243)

Part II: Manahambre Road

Kala pani (117) –Kala Pani in Historical Context

St. Helena (117) –St. Helena Island in Significant Locations

Millions of Africans were driven westward to provide labour for the sugar and cotton plantations that fattened the purses of Europe (117) –Usine Ste. Madeleine in Significant Locations

That forced marriage of Africa with Europe occurred on Caribbean soil, creating Creole plant and animal hybrids of astonishing beauty and hardiness (117) –Cultural Hybridity in Historical Context

H.A. Gainder age 13 (117)

The Artist with its cargo of coolies (118) –Kala Pani in Historical Context

S.O. Jeevan had killed a white sailor who grabbed Gainder and tried to fondle her breasts as she was making her way one night from the upper deck to the women’s quarters on the aft side of the ship (118)

S.O. Carib girl- lush and full-bottomed (120)

H.A. Leaning against that old pilotric and waiting for Bess to come down the hill, I was assailed by an unimaginable amount of desolation. When she reached me, tears were flowing freely down my cheeks. There were no words (122)

H.A. Family was not just breeding and reproducing—it was a work of art in itself, as carved and sculpted as any other legacy that one could leave behind (123)

L Legislation about inheriting property (123)

Trinidad ranks third in AIDS capitals of the world (124) –AIDS in Historical Context

H.A. Several rolls of film and a few instant snapshots…through her eyes I saw the property’s possibilities and knew that Kello would be pleased (126)

H.A. Prayer over family (130)

H.A. Oral historian…she had started her education there in 1925 and never spoke of it without using the word privilege (134)

Presbyterians (134) –Cultural Hybridity in Historical Context

C.O. Discarding their Indian name of Sankar (134)

H.A. The tale of Kowsilia (135-136)

H.A. We all looked at each other in silence. We never discussed it; better to forget such a tale and get on with our own, more modern lives. But there was no denying the powerful sense of menace in the air (135)

Government exhibition examination (135) –The New Curriculum in Historical Context

G.O. To us, failure meant early marriage and a life bound to a washtub, scrubbing dirty clothes and smelly diapers (135)

G.O. For all the chances and opportunities it offered, high school was full of false promises (136)

G.O. Comfortable in my uncomfortable new uniform, I took strong, certain steps, knowing what was expected of me (136)

S.B. Be careful (136-137)

S.B. Careless, swinging (137-139)

C.O. There must have been some reason why the stories circulated only among the Indian girls (138)

S.O. Slackness was talking to boys, writing letters to boys, having sex, doing the thing (139)

S.B. It could not show us how to swing carelessly, high over the trees and not get the violent push from behind (141)

S.O. Dirty Skirts Club (141)

S.O. Inspection (141)

S.O. Love comics (142)

C.O. Miss Camilla Lee- “red” girl of mixed African/Chinese ancestry (143)

Independence from Britain- “all ah we is one” (144) –Eric Williams in Historical Context

C.O. Country coolies (145)

S.O. But if race was not part of our exploration, sex certainly was (145)

S.O. What we wanted out of life: Glamour, Travel, Money, Love, a Career…marriage we considered only vaguely, although falling in love was high on the list (145)

S.O. Dirty Skirts (146)

S.B. Swinging (147)

L Property (150)

H.A. Generation (151)

H.A. I felt a powerful sense of belonging (153)

H.A. I had given up on Cecile Fatiman (164)

L Kello hoped that, in time, Joey and Linda would come to understand the value of the land in Manahambre Road (165)

S.O. Hatred of Uncle Baddall (166)

S.O. Untouched (168)

S.O. Taxi ride (173)

G.O. “In life you have to choose. You can’t have everything” (176)

G.O. He wanted me to have a career and grow into an independent woman (177)

Cannes Brûlées (178) –Cannes Brûlée in Glossary and Usine Ste. Madeleine in Significant Locations

G.O. Shift dress (179-180)

G.O. Escape through education (180)

G.O. The thought of marriage or domestic life still filled me with irrational feelings of dread, even towards Roddy with whom I was deeply involved (181)

Marriage with its eternal domestic trappings seemed like certain death (181)

C.O. Red nigger (185)

C.O. Most of my Indian friends had the same problem, but we suffered in silence. It was yet another shameful Indian secret to be kept from our Creole friends and those of other races who would hold us up to ridicule for being backward (186)

G.O. And husbands too, beating and kicking wives (187)

G.O. Wife and mother (189)

H.A. Journal (189)

H.A. “My wealth is my children” (190)

C.O. Movies starred white people and that was that. The stories, the ways of life, we could always adapt to our own lives (191)

G.O. “Before you study your books, you studying boy. And a Creole boy too! What will happen to you?” (192)

C.O. Her parents disliked Kemal because he was Muslim (193)

Curriculum (194) – The New Curriculum in Historical Context

De Doctah (195) –Eric Williams in Historical Context

G.O. Bree hit Mona (196)

G.O. “I’ve thought about it since. All the work always fell on you. It just wasn’t fair” (200)

S.B. I recalled the swingbridge incident (201)

C.O. Coolie girl (201)

C.O. Race had hit me between the eyes much earlier than it had Kello. The first time I was called a coolie I was only about five years old (203)

A coolie was a nasty thing. I hated coolies (204)

M A settled life we never had (205)

C.O. Race (206-207)

C.O. But I couldn’t bear the talk, the disgrace to the family. It was a racial attitude, I admit that. That ‘one nation’ idea the new government was pushing was a direct attack on Indians’ (208-209)

S.B. Swing (213)

Two funerals were simultaneously in progress—the public one, and the private one that was between Matthew, Babs, Bess, and me (217) –Cultural Hybridity in Historical Context

C.O. But I grew interested in their language and how the years in Canada made little impact on the West Indianness of their speech (218-219)

C.O. Cuisine (221)

H.A. He told us that he was preparing for a trip to Trinidad and wanted to find tombstones, family sites, any kind of history that he could (226)

Jerningham Junction (226) –Jerningham Junction in Significant Locations