Ever Since We Small

An intricately woven tapestry of stories where survival, resilience, and self-discovery are passed down through generations of an Indo-Trinidadian family.

Celeste Mohammed’s second novel-in-stories, Ever Since We Small, is a family saga that spans from the days of the British Raj in India to multicultural modern Trinidad. Written in a blend of Standard English and several flavors of Trinidad Kriol, the book follows the bloodline of a young woman, Jayanti, after her decision to become a girmitiya, an indentured laborer in the Caribbean.

Jayanti’s grandson, Lall Gopaul, seeks to escape the rural village where he was born but becomes seduced and corrupted by urban life. His son, Shiva, is forced to take a child-bride, Salma, but never recovers from the guilt. Heartache follows for their three children—Anand, Nadya, and Abby—who must each find a way to accept and yet move past their parents’ failed example.

Along the journey of these ten interconnected stories, the alchemy necessary to turn the Gopauls’ inheritance of pain into a “generation of gold” requires intervention by the living and dead, the “real” and the mythical, the mundane and the magical, the secular and the sacred.