BOOK REVIEW - WHEN WE WERE BIRDS

When We Were Birds by Ayanna Lloyd Banwa

Format: Trade Paperback

Publisher: Double Day Books

Published: 15 March 2022

Setting: Trinidad

Rating: 4.5 Stars

Synopsis:

The St. Bernard women have lived in Morne Marie, the house on top of a hill outside Port Angeles, for generations. Built from the ashes of a plantation that enslaved their ancestors, it has come to shelter a lineage that is bonded by much more than blood. One woman in each generation of St. Bernards is responsible for the passage of the city's souls into the afterlife. But Yejide's relationship with her mother, Petronella, has always been contorted by anger and neglect, which Petronella stubbornly carries to her death bed, leaving Yejide unprepared to fulfill her destiny.

Raised in the countryside by a devout Rastafarian mother, Darwin has always abided by the religious commandment not to interact with death. He has never been to a funeral, much less seen a dead body. But when his ailing mother can no longer work and the only job he can find is grave digging, he must betray the life she built for him in order to provide for them both. Newly shorn of his dreadlocks and his past and determined to prove himself, Darwin finds himself adrift in a city electric with possibility and danger.

Yejide and Darwin will meet inside the gates of Fidelis, Port Angeles's largest and oldest cemetery, where the dead lie uneasy in their graves and a reckoning with fate beckons them both. A masterwork of lush imagination and immersive lyricism, When We Were Birds is a spellbinding novel about inheritance, loss, and love's seismic power to heal. (Source: Goodreads)

My Thoughts.....

I am slowly moving away from categorizing certain books and stories as ‘magical realism’. After reading ‘Things They Lost’ by Okwiri Oduor and now ‘When We Were Birds’ by Ayanna Banwo, I am now more convinced than ever, that boxing this in a single categorization of magic is inaccurate. For starters, there is no magic in here. What these books are, is a spiritual otherworldliness that is very much real and part of our lives. We have always believed in the supernatural, we have always paid reverence to our ancestors, we have always believed in forces working in our lives outside of reason or logic. These are the stories we grew up listening to. There is no magic here. And so I begin by denouncing and rejecting that categorization as I reflect on this book.

Yejide grew up listening to stories told by her grandmother about a ‘time before time’ when animals roamed freely until human warriors invaded wreaking havoc and causing mass deaths. To balance the living and the dead, some of the parrots transformed into Corbeaux – a sort of black vulture/also one who carts away the dead – to help the dead along their way. Yejide is descendent from this lineage of Corbeaux, and as with the women that came before her, she can speak to the dead and is tasked with guiding them and restoring this balance. It’s a gift that she struggles with as her mother who was meant to teach her what to do, has always been distant and inattentive, but as the story unfolds, it becomes clear that it is ‘duty above all else’

“She only know her mother through moments meant for someone else.”

On the other hand, Darwin, a young man from the country moves to the city of Port Angeles in search of a new life for himself – he is tired of living in his mother’s shadows. The only job available to him in the city is as a gravedigger at Fidelis Cemetery, one of the oldest cemeteries in Trinidad where the dead rest uneasy. Darwin, raised by his devoted mother as a Rastafarian has to shave off his dreads and move to this new city that his mother is afraid will swallow him alive as it did his father and is also concerned for his soul because, ‘Rasta don’t deal with the dead’.

Darwin, an empath who feels deeply for the living and their pain and Yejide, who helps the dead find peace, cross paths at the threshold of Fidelis Cemetery in the most supernatural and electrifying ways as they both grapple with what this means for them individually and collectively as it seemed destined. There is such mastery of language and skill – with Trinidadian patois infused in the narration, it’s exciting to learn that this is a debut as I now can’t wait to read more from this author. Aside from skill and language, Ayanna tells this story so beautifully, you can tell that she cares deeply not only for the story itself but also the characters who are so well crafted. They all come to life, even the ghosts and ancestors. As Yejide and Darwin’s love story unspools, you find yourself pulled in and caring deeply for their outcome.

The complicated mother-daughter relationship between Yejide and Petronella is reminiscent of Nicole Dennis-Benn in her portrayal of these kinds of relationships. The separation of Darwin and his mother was also quite devasting. The story also tackles love and its various manifestations, spirituality, ancestral lineages, mythology, life and death.

I was a tad bit disappointment in how quick Yejide was in forgetting and discarding Seema, her best friend cum lover. It felt like Seema was a time-filler and was only holding forte until someone better comes along, but considering how thoughtful and empathetic Yejide had been portrayed in this book, it felt completely out of character. I would have wished that there was more thought here, and that this conflict was drawn out a bit more so that it’s resolution felt more complete.

The flaws in the story however do not taint the beautiful masterpiece that this debut is and it is one I highly recommend.