Below is an announcement from Wilmington Community Television’s “Book Stew:”
Hello, viewers, listeners, and readers! The April Book Stew episode features the return visit of Indo-Trinidadian author Celeste Mohammed with her new novel, Ever Since We Small. The book’s ten chapters of five generations begins with Jayanti, who makes a fateful decision from her husband’s funeral pyre as she performs the ritual act of sati, in the Eastern Indian state of Bihar in 1899. In an incredibly tense scene read by the author, eighteen-year-old Jayanti is expected to atone for her husband’s unexpected death but instead becomes an indentured servant in Trinidad and the matriarch of a family that struggles with the cultural expectations of women under Spanish, British, and French colonial rule.
Some background: In 2021, I read two novels by Trini author Lauren Francis-Sharma, ‘Til the Well Runs Dry (2014) and Book of the Little Axe (2020). I also became aware of another “dougla” writer, Celeste Mohammed, who was studying locally at Lesley University in Cambridge and had written her debut novel Pleasantview. Seeing a compelling theme, the December 2021 Book Stew episode featured both “dougla” (a term for the intersection of African and Indian cultures in the Caribbean, embodying a unique, hybrid identity) authors for a three-way conversation, with Lauren in the US and Celeste in Trinidad.
Then, in February 2025, Lauren’s third novel Casualties of Truth was featured in a reading at the Harvard Book Store in Cambridge, and her appearance became that month’s Book Stew episode. The novel has received nominations for the Dublin Literary Award 2026 and the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction 2026. And Celeste’s short story, Plenty Time, was declared the winner of the Hope Prize for 2026, which received over 2500 submissions from writers in over 90 countries.
I am so proud to know both accomplished literary stars, and I believe that this is one of the most significant interviews I’ve ever shared in Book Stew’s thirteen year history.
Please click on the links below and let me know if you agree. Enjoy!
YouTube video: https://tinyurl.com/bookstew148-yt
Soundcloud podcast: https://tinyurl.com/bookstew148-sc
Eileen MacDougall is the host/producer of 145+ episodes of Book Stew, a web series and podcast originating in 2013, featuring every variety of authors, illustrators, poets, and playwrights, plus a cat that survived a tornado and lived to write about it!
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