Johnny Coomansingh

Cocoa Woman Johnny Coomansingh

Cocoa Woman: A Narrative About Cocoa Estate Culture in the British West Indies speaks of the discomfort, the pain, the suffering, and what a young man now speculates to be the abuse he endured while spending weekends and school vacations on his godmother's cocoa plantation. In retrospect, it was nothing short of child slave labor. He feels that he stomached "slave labor" just because he received a morsel to eat. The abuse was more than just physical. Unknowingly, he suffered psychological abuse.

Against the background of colonial domination and exploitation in Trinidad and Tobago, this book is poignant, direct, and to the point. It unleashes the spirit of the cocoa field and fully exposes the daily menial rounds of production, the never-ending chores, language idioms, village bacchanal, beliefs, cuisine, artifacts, folkways, and foibles that intertwined to constitute cocoa estate culture. All the characters in the story were given different monikers. Most of them are now dead.