The main source of generational trauma in this text is violence. Violence is both experienced and inherited by children, and one such act of violence is the narrative’s inciting incident: While returning home from a visit to Everardo’s family in Mexico, Everardo, Turtle, and the young Ever are stopped by Mexican police officers. Everardo is subject to a brutal beating that both his wife and his child witness. Lena, Turtle’s mother, understands the stakes of bearing witness to such brutality, and admonishes her daughter: “You never take an infant around violence” (13). She understands that young brains are not capable of processing this kind of cruelty, and that when they witness a family member (especially a parent) receiving a beating like the one Everardo survives, their minds hold onto the memories as trauma. Additionally, children are not old enough yet to have the linguistic capability to work through and process trauma. It adversely impacts their development and the way that they process emotion even as adults.

Ever does manifest signs of trauma, both from having observed violence against his father and as a result of having been subject to his father’s violent temper.