Yesterdays - by Harold Sonny Ladoo (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A rediscovered classic, Yesterdays turns colonialism on its head.

After years of suffering at the hands of white missionaries trying to convert Trinidadians to Christianity, Poonwa has decided, as payback, to go to Canada and start a Hindu mission. His father, Choonilal, doesn't want to borrow the money Poonwa needs from the corrupt local priest. The whole village gets dragged into the fight, a distraction from the usual arguments over latrines and sexual dalliances.

First published in 1974, Yesterdays is a ribald, outrageous portrait of Trinidadian village life, and a prescient proto-parody of what would become the archetypal immigrant story. Sacred cows both literal and figurative are skewered in a series of increasingly absurd encounters between villagers who can't keep their noses - and other body parts - out of their neighbours' business.

A foreword by Kevin Jared Hosein contextualizes this important book, which was politically and aesthetically ahead of its time but lost after the untimely death of Harold Sonny Ladoo.

"Yesterdays upends conventional narratives that find sexual liberation in the postindustrial city. Ladoo's agrarian villagers inhabit the fullness of their complex humanities in audaciously funny and often uncomfortable ways, and are radically at ease with their fluid sexual appetites. An under-appreciated gem, his novel is as much a testament to Ladoo's skillful observation and rendering of the world that surrounded him as it is to the value of being tellers of our own stories." - Andil Gosine, author of Nature's Wild: Love, Sex and Law in the Caribbean

"Yesterdays is the novel, underappreciated on its initial release and since forgotten, that should have charted a deviant, audacious path through the staid self-seriousness of Canadian literature. Let's hope there's still time." - Pasha Malla, author of All You Can Kill

About the Author

Harold Sonny Ladoo was born in Trinidad and Tobago in 1945 and immigrated to Toronto, Canada, with his wife and son in 1968. He is the author of No Pain Like This Body and his second novel, Yesterdays, was published posthumously in 1974.

Kevin Jared Hosein is a Caribbean novelist. He has also worked as a secondary school biology teacher for over a decade. He was named overall winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize in 2018, and was the Caribbean regional winner in 2015. He has published two books: The Repenters and The Beast of Kukuyo. The latter received a CODE Burt Award for Caribbean Young Adult Literature, and both have been longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award. His writings, fiction and non-fiction, have been published in numerous anthologies and outlets including Lightspeed Magazine, Moko, Wasafiri and adda. He lives in Trinidad and Tobago.