Harold Sonny Ladoo was born on February 4, 1945, the third child of Sonny and Hamidhan Ladoo, in an Indo-Trinidadian family living in McBean, Trinidad. In 1945, McBean was a small settlement of South Asian peasant laborers who farmed small plots of land. However, they were still largely dependent upon seasonal labor on the island’s sugar plantations. At seven, Ladoo’s parents enrolled him in a local Christian missionary school, where he remained until 1955 when a Hindu school opened in town. In 1960, at age 15, he enrolled first at St. Andrew’s Academy and later at Kenley’s College to prepare for university certificate exams in history and literature. He read comics and classics voraciously, attended lectures by visiting Indian speakers, viewed countless English and Indian films, and, dreaming of a literary career, began to fill notebooks with his poetry and short stories.