Yesterdays

Tue, 30 Jul 2024 11:51:37 +0300

A rediscovered classic, Yesterdays turns colonialism on its head.

Originally published in 1974, Yesterdays is nominally the story of one man's attempt to launch a Hindu Mission from Trinidad to convert the heathen Christians of Canada. Yet this conceit quickly derails into a ribald, outrageous portrait of West Indian village life, and a prescient, proto-parody of what would become the archetypal 'immigrant story.' Sacred cows both figurative and literal are skewered in a series of hilarious and increasingly bawdy encounters between villagers who gossip, cheat, and steal, but also form a balanced, if chaotic, collectivity. Yesterdays is one of the great lost English-language novels of the previous century—perhaps ahead of its own time upon its initial release, but sure to appeal to 21st-century audiences who will appreciate its startling prescience, linguistic inventiveness, as well as its bold singularity amid a canon glutted with...

No Pain Like This Body

Wed, 14 Sep 1977 08:13:11 +0300

First published by Anansi in 1972, No Pain Like This Body remains a classic of Canadian and Caribbean writing. Set in a turn-of-the-century Hindu community in the Eastern Caribbean, the novel describes the perilous existence of a poor rice-growing family during the August rainy season. Their struggles to cope with illness, a drunken and unpredictable father, and the violence of the elements end in unbearable loss. Through vivid, vertiginous prose, and with brilliant economy and originality, Ladoo creates a fearful world of violation and grief, in the face of which even the most despairing efforts to endure stand out as acts of raw courage.

About the Author

Harold Sonny Ladoo is the author of Yesterdays. He was born in Trinidad before he went abroad, emigrating to Canada in 1968. He died an untimely and violent death on a visit home to Calcutta Settlement, Trinidad, at the age of 28. Dionne Brand is the author of At the Full and Change of the Moon, Land to Light On, and A Map to the Door of No Return.

Harold Sonny Ladoo - Free Library Land Online - Anthologies

Yesterdays

No Pain Like This Body

About the Author