Reviews with content warning for Violence - When We Were Birds

I picked up this book at my library on a whim and I ended up pleasantly surprised. It is a really engaging story and it also feels very fresh, like nothing I've read before.

It is told in a dual POV and I have to admit I was particularly drawn to Darwin's chapters (compared to the ones in Yejide's perspective). His narrative voice is just so strong and captivating, it was honestly beautiful to witness his character development.

The writing is very atmospheric and the author does a great job of building and breathing life into the spaces that these characters inhabit.

I didn't like a short segment in Yejide's POV where the writing got a bit too experimental for my liking, it felt too fragmented and stream of consciousness-like. Also, I would have liked a bit more of exploration into Yejide's character and the gift connected to her lineage.

However, these are minor grievances, overall I really enjoyed the reading experience and I look forward to Ayanna Lloyd Banwo's future projects.

Content Warnings

erebus53's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

Set in Trinidad this is a strange story about a man who is raised Rastafarian, and who has sworn not to deal with dead bodies, and a woman who has been raised in a family of strong women with supernatural ability to know those who have passed. When he comes of a certain age, Emmanuel tries to get a job and the only thing going is working as a gravedigger. His boss is dodgy, and there's some sort of sidehustle that his coworkers are all in on, but he is loathe to get embroiled in that sort of thing. He doesn't even like rum.

When I first started it I found it a little unwieldy to get into. The style is lyrical and it is all about setting and the vibe of Trinidad, with its flowers and birds, hot weather and old wooden houses, family and food. Amongst this we have a sense of the expectations our mothers put upon us, and the sense of abandonment harboured when our parents do not live up to our hopes. RIght in with all this is mystical dream walking, and haunting, and legends of older times.

There is a sense of finding one's place, and the ending of the story is both unearthly and also satisfying. Gave me my first tears for the new year, but I'm not complaining!

Content Warnings

bookishmillennial's review

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challenging emotional inspiring mysterious reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

What a gorgeously written literary romance. I listened to the audiobook and I highly recommend it, as the narration was excellent 👌🏽

Content Warnings

melrkernan's review

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adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

4.5

The themes of this book (death, folk mysticism, Trinidadian culture) were really out of my "normal" reading style, but I couldn't put this down. A magical, captivating love story sprinkled with familial drama, grief, and redemption. Kudos to Banwo for this debut!!

Content Warnings

verysillygoose's review

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dark emotional reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Content Warnings

ceallaighsbooks's review against another edition

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dark emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

“‘You remember how the story end. The parrots ended the great war. They flew east toward the sunrise, turned their green feathers shiny black, and they changed… The parrots wait for the dead and watch over the carcasses and consume the flesh. They not concerned with no God and you shouldn't be neither. We come from Death, and Death older than all the gods no matter what they name. Death was done old when man start to look up in the sky to make God. We do her work.’”

TITLE—When We Were Birds

AUTHOR—Ayanna Lloyd Banwo

PUBLISHED—2022

PUBLISHER—Penguin Random House

GENRE—literary fiction

SETTING—Trinidad

MAIN THEMES/SUBJECTS—Rastafarianism, old cemeteries, death & the dead, family—esp mother/child—relationships, psychopomps, corbeaux, moths, legacy & inheritance, grief, betrayal, soulmates, the responsibility to ones community & family (especially found family), choices, forgiveness, respect for & the justice of the dead

WRITING STYLE—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

CHARACTERS—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

STORY/PLOT—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

BONUS ELEMENT/S—Corbeaux 🖤

PHILOSOPHY—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

“‘You know what I remember from standing on the junction, running away, no idea where to go? The feeling that nobody down there knew where to go either. That they was all just as lost. Most people out there, people down the hill, people in the city, all of them fraid dying. Fraid it every day. Is like a black curtain that block out everything they think they know. They don't know that death is a blessing, a balancing. That it have women living on this hill who whole life is about making sure that death don't have to be a thing to fear, that somebody here to make sure that is nothing more than a good, long sleep. To be able to do that, to be part of that, is a blessing too.’”

Summary:

“Electric [and] breathtaking… The anchor of this story is Trinidad itself. Banwo roots the reader in its traditions and rituals, in the sights and sounds and colours and smells of fruit vendors, fish vendors, street preachers and schoolchildren, in the glorious matriarchy by which lineage is upheld.” — ‘New York Times Book Review’

“A searing symphony of magic and loss, love and hope, where in the middle of death, love comes shiny, sparkling and alive. This book might just heal you.” — Marlon James

My thoughts:

I love to read seasonally but sometimes it’s hard to know when the perfect time actually is to read a new book when you aren’t sure what you’re going to find between its pages. With Banwo’s novel, I found a book that is perfect for the seasonal transition between summer and fall. This book packed the kind of literary heat that I love to read in the summer and a setting whose relationship with the sun is inextricably bound, with the beautiful and morbid vibes of the gothic and an atmosphere crowded with tombs, ghosts, and grief. I loved the interweaving of different elements of Trinidadian cultural heritage whose deep history never outshown its relevance to the lives and spirituality of its contemporary characters. The love story was also refreshingly glorious in a way many literary love stories no longer seem to be.

I would recommend this book to readers who love contemporary gothic genre-fiction but treated in a highly elevated literary style. This book is best read among the dead.

Final note: Banwo’s an autobuy author for me now.

“‘And now let us call the ones who have come before us, who are here still with us and will be here after we are dust… We say their names together on this day to make sure they stay with us, that they don't forget themselves and the promises they have made. We have promises to keep too. We speak only of the manner in which they died. We speak to no one about how they lived, or how they learned to fly.’”

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Season: late summer / early fall—a perfect season-in-transition read

CW // death of a parent, grief, violence, corruption (Please feel free to DM me for more specifics!)

Further Reading—

NOTES FROM A WRITER’S BOOK OF CURES AND SPELLS by Marcia Douglas—TBR
KRIK? KRAK! by Edwidge Danticat
ON A WOMAN’S MADNESS by Astrid Roemer
ANNIE JOHN by Jamaica Kincaid
I, TITUBA by Maryse Condé
MRS DEATH MISSES DEATH by Salena Godden—TBR
BRIDGE OF SOULS by Victoria Schwab
FROM HERE TO ETERNITY by Caitlin Doughty
A TOMB WITH A VIEW by Peter Ross—TBR

Favorite Quotes—

'Patience, I tell you. Just patience. Blessings don't come when you decide they must come, but they does come when you need them the most.'

‘…Money is not everything, Emmanuel. You know what kind of man I raise you to be. You know I never ask for no help from nobody. I never bring no next man in this house for him to play like he is more man inside of here than you. You know how I rate you, and what hopes I have for you, and this is what you going and do me? Do yourself? I grow you with a clean heart. You think it have any silver and gold in this world that could make up for your soul, Emmanuel? You think anybody in that place care anything about your soul?'

Take in front before in front take him.

Granny used to tell her that they come from the storm and the storm come from them.

All of them well know that mourning is not a thing that have an end - is not a rope - but every day they carry the hope that today might be the day that Petronella shake herself up and start back living.

The word 'family' had nothing to do with biology in the house on Morne Marie. Kin was better…

After all these years, perhaps it was time that the dead learn how to stay dead, how to take care of themselves without the St Bernard women to keep them company.

‘You know what a grave is, Darwin? Is the only piece of real estate most people own in they whole life. Each one have a deed like a house, like any other piece of land. When people bring in this,' she pull out a yellowing piece of paper from the file and flap it at him, ‘it let me know that the plot belong to their people and so they could bury somebody in it. It does pass down in families, see? So, each grave have a story. Could have four, five, eight people bury there one on top the other over the years… Why you think we don't just bury people anyhow? Why people bother with headstone and decoration and flowers? Is to remember. Grave is home, grave is lineage. Grave is to know where your people is, even if you can't see them anymore… Every person, they family, where they bury, how deep, where they come from, what version of God they feel waiting for them all in here. This room,' she flick her hand and gesture to the cabinets, the shelves, the piles on her desk, 'is the real heartbeat of Fidelis. Don't forget that, no matter what them fellas outside will tell you.'

'You remember how the story end. The parrots ended the great war. They flew east toward the sunrise, turned their green feathers shiny black, and they changed… The parrots wait for the dead and watch over the carcasses and consume the flesh. They not concerned with no God and you shouldn't be neither. We come from Death, and Death older than all the gods no matter what they name. Death was done old when man start to look up in the sky to make God. We do her work.'

‘So why you send me to church all those years? Why insist that we do Sunday school and Bible study and all that foolishness?'

Petronella shrug. ‘I had to go. Your grandmother too. Just because we older than God, don't mean we on bad terms.'

'You wait until is you. Fair don't always mean good. Exchange don't always mean peace. Power don't always mean free.’

'There. Focus on it… Not with your eyes, child,' Petronella snap. 'Some things spirit, and some things flesh.' She press low on Yeiide belly again, rougher, hurting her now. 'Here. Look with here.'

'We weren't close. But we were bound. Like duty. Like vows.'

He throw his head back and laugh, and she let herself just look at him - throat taut, mouth wide, hair cut close to the skull - and for a second she think of how a wolf does stretch his head up to howl at the moon, or to call to its kind far away. Something lonely.

What else it have in the world right in front of his eyes that he don't see?

‘They know what we are?'

'No. Well, they know enough. The old know more than the young. That is always the way of things.'

…the road start a slow incline through the mountains. Before long everywhere turn green and the air feel cool, and the road open into another world. On one side is rock folds and moss-green trees and tiny springs trickle out of the cracks. On the other, lush valleys, the golden glow of the afternoon sun and big open sky. Is not like Darwin never see mountains before, not like he never see the world splay open in green and gold and fire and softness, but somehow here with her, driving in a silence that don't feel like silence, it hit different. He keep his eyes on the view outside the window, reach toward the armrest in between their seats and catch hold of her hand. Her fingers stiffen, then fold themselves into his. He breathe in the cool air, feel the last rays on his face and close his eyes.

He smile. ‘Two roast for me, auntie. And if the soup taste as nice as it smell I will take one too.'

'Ask Yejide and she will tell you. This is the best soup you will ever eat.'

'Well, give me a big one then and put plenty dumpling.' His grin nearly break Yejide apart. It is the first time she see him smile, really smile. Annie blush and look at him somewhere between a mother gazing on her favourite son and a siren wondering how soon she could lure him to her bed. He had that quality. The kind where you don't know if to take him home and feed him or just take him home.

Yejide don't have the heart to tell him that is not only headstones that make a place a burial ground. Under the Greens, under fancy restaurants that used to be plantation houses, under the government buildings, under the housing complexes, under the shopping malls, is layers and layers of dead - unknown, unnamed, unclaimed. It don't have a single place on this whole island that don't house the dead.

I mean, a small life is a life still ent?

Content Warnings

smiti_nathan's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

3.75 stars & rounding up

This book was enjoyable as an audiobook. I thought the narration was fantastic. The plot felt slow-moving at times, so the audiobook helped with the pacing. There were parts of the characters' motivations and backgrounds that I would have loved to be more developed (e.g., a bit more background about Darwin and how his upbringing relates to grave work). My favorite part of the book was the dialogue between Yejide and Darwin. I felt that was written so well. I also appreciated getting a sense of place in this novel. The descriptions of Fidelis and Port Angeles really transported me there and I've never been to Trinidad and Tobago. Looking forward to more from the author

Content Warnings

catalyst226's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

This author has a such a deft touch for atmosphere with her writing. The book was fairly slow-paced and really set up for the intensity at the end of the plot. I really loved the discussions of grief, family, love, and duty. It is set in Trinidad & Tobago, and written with the accent. I highly recommend the audiobook for the talented narration by both voices.

Content Warnings

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