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A review by lory_enterenchanted
When We Were Birds by Ayanna Lloyd Banwo
dark
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
4.0
"How to explain to him that her mother is a womb and a grave; a cage and a pair of wings; a feeding tube and a noose."
A beautiful novel about love and death, about buried trauma and hidden legacies, about accepting responsibility one's heritage while becoming oneself, creating a new life. Darwin and Yejide's journey to come together seems to reveal the magic that is behind the curtains of everyday life, if only we had the eyes to see it.
More quotes:
"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."
"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."
A beautiful novel about love and death, about buried trauma and hidden legacies, about accepting responsibility one's heritage while becoming oneself, creating a new life. Darwin and Yejide's journey to come together seems to reveal the magic that is behind the curtains of everyday life, if only we had the eyes to see it.
More quotes:
"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."
"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."