Fay­ola K J Fras­er

“The lit­er­a­ture of a peo­ple be­longs to those peo­ple. Writ­ing is a way to in­form, teach, warn, and wres­tle with things. It shouldn’t just en­ter­tain but al­low us to un­rav­el and re­claim.”

Cel­e­brat­ed Trinida­di­an nov­el­ist Ce­leste Mo­hammed, poised to de­but her sec­ond nov­el, has made a name for her­self as an au­thor, wield­ing the pow­er of the word in both her books to ex­plore of­ten re­pressed themes of iden­ti­ty, com­mu­ni­ty and the com­plex­i­ty at the in­ter­sec­tion of race, gen­der, and his­to­ry. Mo­hammed has gar­nered nu­mer­ous ac­co­lades, in­clud­ing the pres­ti­gious 2022 OCM Bo­cas Prize for Caribbean Lit­er­a­ture cel­e­brat­ing her de­but nov­el, “Pleas­antview”.

Born and raised in T&T, Mo­hammed’s first ca­reer was in law, as she grew up against a back­drop of the pop­u­lar sen­ti­ment of the time, where young peo­ple were on­ly en­cour­aged in­to ca­reers in med­i­cine, law or en­gi­neer­ing.

“Well, I was nev­er good at math,” she laughs. “So that ruled out be­ing a doc­tor or en­gi­neer.” Armed with her in­trin­sic love of read­ing and writ­ing, she de­cid­ed to study law.

Af­ter ten years of prac­tice, she faced the re­al­i­ty that her sat­is­fac­tion as a writer was fu­elled by the as­pects of her ca­reer that in­volved writ­ing. As a re­sult, she de­cid­ed to take what was orig­i­nal­ly meant to be a year-long sab­bat­i­cal in 2011.

Dur­ing that year, she lost close fam­i­ly mem­bers and friends and used writ­ing as a cop­ing mech­a­nism, even­tu­al­ly com­pil­ing an en­tire nov­el over the course of the year.

Search­ing for an­swers on what to do with her writ­ing, she was en­cour­aged by a fel­low writer to share her book with an agent. Em­pow­ered by the glow­ing feed­back she re­ceived from the oth­er writer, she felt en­cour­aged and hope­ful. Short­ly af­ter her hope dis­si­pat­ed, as the feed­back came from the agent, and she was told, “Your writ­ing isn’t what I hoped it would be.” Us­ing this crit­i­cism con­struc­tive­ly and de­ter­mined to fine-tune her writ­ing, Mo­hammed ap­plied to an MFA Pro­gramme in Cre­ative Writ­ing at Les­ley Col­lege in Cam­bridge, Mass­a­chu­setts. She was ac­cept­ed and ar­rived at Les­ley Col­lege in Jan­u­ary 2014.

De­scrib­ing the writ­ing pro­gramme as an “un­do­ing”, she was forced to stretch and grow her skills and grap­ple with all that she had been taught, even­tu­al­ly dis­card­ing the for­mal writ­ing of her child­hood and time in law. As it was “the first time be­ing a part of a com­mu­ni­ty of writ­ers,” she felt bol­stered by a shared sense of be­long­ing among her peers, “be­ing among peo­ple who tru­ly un­der­stood the de­sire to write.”

Dur­ing her pro­gramme, she be­came preg­nant with her daugh­ter and took a six-month sab­bat­i­cal. Up­on her re­turn, her ad­vis­er told her that she had to de­vel­op six sto­ries to sub­mit for her the­sis in or­der to grad­u­ate, and un­der that pres­sure, she be­gan link­ing the dis­parate sto­ries she al­ready had writ­ten to­geth­er in­to what even­tu­al­ly be­came her de­but nov­el, “Pleas­antview”. Mo­hammed grad­u­at­ed in June 2016 not on­ly with her de­gree but with a lens on her work. The ex­ter­nal the­sis ex­am­in­er, blown away by her writ­ing, asked Mo­hammed to con­tin­ue to work­shop her sto­ries and be­gan send­ing them out to pub­li­ca­tions. In Jan­u­ary 2017, she re­ceived her first ac­cep­tance from a pres­ti­gious lit­er­ary mag­a­zine, the New Eng­land Re­view, which want­ed to pub­lish her sto­ry.

“I was blown away, es­pe­cial­ly as the sto­ry is writ­ten in (Trinida­di­an Eng­lish) Cre­ole, not Stan­dard Eng­lish.”

Through­out her ca­reer as an au­thor, Mo­hammed has re­mained adamant about writ­ing sto­ries that re­late to T&T in Cre­ole.

Grow­ing up, she re­mem­bered be­ing for­bid­den to speak Cre­ole at home as a young child, and even when she was al­lowed to, writ­ing in Cre­ole was still not per­mit­ted.

Af­ter her sto­ries be­gan to gain sig­nif­i­cant trac­tion, she even won a Pen/Robert J Dau Short Sto­ry Prize in 2018 for emerg­ing writ­ers and felt em­pow­ered to not on­ly con­tin­ue to write but al­so write in the lan­guage of our peo­ple. From 2018 to 2020, she sub­mit­ted her sto­ry re­peat­ed­ly, with­out los­ing faith that at some point, the right pub­lish­er would pick it up.

“I was writ­ing these sto­ries be­cause the kind of Caribbean books I want­ed to read didn’t ex­ist,” she says, mus­ing on what gave her the gump­tion to con­tin­ue sub­mit­ting it. “I wrote some­thing I would want to read, and I knew I couldn’t be the on­ly one.”

In 2020, “Pleas­antview” was picked up by a pub­lish­ing com­pa­ny, and on May 4, 2021, it was re­leased to the world. “It was like hav­ing a child, and then they leave home,” she says, un­sure of what to ex­pect.

It was met with rave re­views and was a fi­nal­ist for and win­ner of var­i­ous awards, along with the book’s in­di­vid­ual sto­ries al­so win­ning awards. Not rest­ing on the suc­cess of the book, Mo­hammed con­tin­ued writ­ing in the back­ground.

“It was dur­ing the lock­down, and there were al­so many top­i­cal in­ci­dents hap­pen­ing at the time,” she re­calls, re­fer­ring specif­i­cal­ly to the mur­der of George Floyd in the US and the dis­ap­pear­ance and death of a young woman in T&T, An­drea Bharatt.

Rid­dled with the anx­i­ety in­duced by COVID-19 and pon­der­ing how she could make her im­pact in the face of these events, Mo­hammed turned once again to her writ­ing.

Her sec­ond nov­el, which will be launched in May 2025, is an in­ves­ti­ga­tion and un­pack­ing of the fe­male ex­pe­ri­ence in Trinidad not too long ago.

“In the course of writ­ing it, I was forced to re­con­sid­er a lot of what I grew up hear­ing about how women should be in an In­di­an house­hold,” she says. “There were cer­tain forms of vi­o­lence and abuse that were deemed nor­mal in that time that I want­ed to dig that up, air it out, and get peo­ple to re­con­sid­er.”

Her nov­el, “Ever Since We Small”, does just that, trac­ing sto­ries of sur­vival, re­silience and self-dis­cov­ery through gen­er­a­tions of an In­do-Trinida­di­an fam­i­ly. She wrote not in iso­la­tion, but through mem­o­ries hand­ed down by her grand­moth­er and through con­ver­sa­tions with her great aunt.

With her usu­al con­vic­tion, she is as­sured that she has grown as a writer and feels com­fort­able that her fans will love this book just as much or even more than “Pleas­antview”.

Ded­i­cat­ed to telling sto­ries of our peo­ple, Mo­hammed views the re­gion “as the most im­por­tant basin in the New World. So much start­ed here, and our lit­er­a­ture be­longs to us, and Caribbean sto­ries shouldn’t be tak­en for grant­ed.” How­ev­er, writ­ing about this re­gion in our lan­guage hasn’t al­ways been easy, and she has faced a huge num­ber of re­jec­tions that sure­ly out­weigh the ac­cep­tances.

She en­cour­aged young writ­ers, es­pe­cial­ly women, to spend time de­vel­op­ing con­fi­dence in them­selves and their writ­ing. With harsh cri­tique and re­jec­tion ac­count­ing for a great ma­jor­i­ty of the feed­back re­ceived as a writer, she in­sist­ed that ground­ing one­self in some­thing–she re­mains ground­ed in her faith–is cru­cial in the jour­ney as a pro­fes­sion­al au­thor.

Serendip­i­tous­ly set to re­lease on the same date, four years af­ter the launch of “Pleas­antview”, Mo­hammed is poised to open the month of May, which cel­e­brates the month of In­di­an Ar­rival in T&T, with her sopho­more nov­el of sto­ries, “Ever Since We Small”.