Espinet sees herself as an activist within women and development movements in Canada and the Caribbean as well as a social commentator on issues that affect the communities that she holds dear. Between 1992 and 1996 she wrote a column for the fortnightly community newspaper Indo Caribbean World and she still contributes essays and commentaries.
Espinet published her first novel “The Swinging Bridge” in 2003. George Lamming, the renowned Caribbean writer has said that this novel is “an extraordinary achievement in the exercise of remembering” and that Ramabai Espinet has “ put the art of memory into the service of an Asian Diaspora whose history from India to the Caribbean traces the secrets and calamities of an Indian family who, in their encounter with other ethnicities, offer an authentic profile of one of the major crises of Modernity. The writing is a model of a certain conversational distinction, natural in tone and highly charged with moral intent”.
Espinet’s first four works were all published in Toronto by Sister Vision Press. In 1990 she edited an anthology of Caribbean women’s poetry called “Creation Fire”. In 1991 she published a collection of poetry, under the title Nuclear Seasons, and then two children's books, The Princess Of Spadina in 1992 and Ninja’s Carnival in 1993.
Espinet developed a performance piece called "Indian Robber Talk" that has been staged in several Toronto festivals. Her poem "Shay's Robber Talk" formed the Afterword in Sherene Razack's Looking White People In The Eye, which was published by the University of Toronto Press in 1998.
“The Swinging Bridge” was longlisted for the 2005 Impac Dublin Award, shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writer' Prize in the category of Best First Book (Caribbean and Canada Region. It was selected for the 2004 Robert Adams Book Review Lecture Series.
The Swinging Bridge, HarperCollins, Canada 2004
The Princess of Spadina: A Tale of Toronto, Sister Vision Press 1998
Ninja’s Carnival Distributed by Women's Press. CIP 1993
Nuclear Seasons: Poems, Sister Vision Press, Toronto 1991
Creation Fire: A CAFRA Anthology Sister Vision Press 1990
