When We Were Birds

October 1, 2021

Following some attention-getting short stories, Ali's Good Intentions features a young British Pakistani man named Nur who must break it to his family on New Year's Eve that the woman he truly loves isn't Pakistani but Black (60,000-copy first printing). Set in Trinidad and Tobago, Banwo's When We Were Birds brings together Yejide, raised in a Port Angeles house built on the remains of a plantation whose owners enslaved her ancestors and left unprepared by her mother for her task in life--ferrying the city's souls into the afterlife--and Darwin, who must disregard the religious commandments of his true-believing Rastafarian mother and accept the only job he can find: that of grave digger. Stuck on her dissertation about the late canonical poet Xiao-Wen Chou, Taiwanese American Ingrid Yang follows down a mysterious archival reference in Chou's Disorientation and ends up acknowledging her anger with academia and white institutions generally. Following up Clark's own questions about the children of victims of Argentina's Dirty War in the 1970s, On a Night of a Thousand Stars features Paloma, an Argentine diplomat's college-age daughter, whose probing questions about her father's involvement in the military dictatorship put her family, her sense of self, and her very life in danger (30,000-copy first printing). In Friedman's Here Lies, climate change-mauled 2040s Louisiana requires cremation rather than burial at death, and Alma fights to reclaim her mother's ashes for a final journey. Cofounder of the Lit Camp Writers Conference, Kravetz reimagines events surrounding the composition of Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar in The Last Confessions of Sylvia P., which are related from the perspectives of Plath's psychiatrist, a nasty rival poet, and a curator years later (100,000-copy first printing). A Canadian film and television producer (she's responsible for the hit CBC series Little Mosque on the Prairie), Nawaz crafts the story of a feckless young woman whose new imam expects better of her, and though there's the risk that Jameela Green Ruins Everything, she is on the case in an absurdist sort of way when he disappears. In Ronan's Chevy's in the Hole, a white man struggling to kick his drug habit and a Black woman working as an urban farmer try to make a go of it together in Flint, MI, as the water is becoming poisoned, with family histories woven in (50,000-copy first printing). In Stringfellow's Memphis, ten-year-old Joan flees her father's violence with her mother and sister to the house built in the historic Black district of Memphis by her grandfather, who was lynched only days after becoming the city's first Black detective.

Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from January 31, 2022
In Banwo’s moving and mythic debut, set in Trinidad and Tobago, a woman juggles a supernatural bond to her home and a whirlwind romance. Born in a large multigenerational house in Morne Marie, Yejide watches her mother, Petronella, recede from the world after the death of Petronella’s twin sister, Geraldine; she lives in a near coma for a year before dying herself. Petronella then visits Yejide as a ghost and passes to her the ability to communicate with spirits that has been shared by generations of women in their family. Meanwhile, Emmanual Darwin leaves the countryside for the city of Port Angeles to take a job in the Fidelis cemetery. It’s not the dead Darwin must fear, but the living, as his coworkers pull him into a scheme involving the disposal of bodies on behalf of politicians and other powerful men. Yejide and Darwin meet at Fidelis to prepare Petronella’s grave for burial. More than love at first sight, their connection is strongly spiritual. Yejide is also attached to her home, and to the boarders in her mother’s house who depend on her, so things get especially complicated when Darwin gets in trouble with his coworkers and they consider fleeing together. Banwo’s stunning lyricism offers a window into her characters as well as a view of the landscape, as when Darwin heads to Port Angeles: “Easy to feel hopeful when the sky clear, the air have some leftover rain in it and the hills green and lush.” The otherworldly setting instantly pulls the reader in. This remarkable debut should not be missed.

February 1, 2022
A gravedigger and a mysterious, powerful young woman are drawn together when the worlds of the dead and the living collide in Trinidad. This wonderfully original debut novel unspools at the stormy crossroads that separates the living and the dead. Blending sobering urban realities with a Caribbean-infused magical realism, Banwo has created a unique world expansive enough to contain a ghost story, a love story, a mysterious mythology, and a thoughtful examination of how family bonds keep us firmly rooted to our pasts. Set in Trinidad, the novel follows the fortunes of Darwin and Yejide, both of whom are struggling through great emotional upheavals. Darwin has left his country home to find work in the city, but the only job he can get is hard labor in a giant cemetery. He's not afraid of the work, but such a job requires him to abandon his Rastafarian upbringing and its edict about staying away from the dead--and it means betraying his devout mother. Meanwhile, Yejide has always existed close to death, growing up in time to its rhythms and rules. One woman in each generation of her family is called to escort souls to the afterlife, but now that her dying mother is passing on this legacy to her, its traditions and responsibilities weigh heavily. As Darwin begins to suspect that his co-workers at the cemetery are involved in heinous crimes and Yejide senses the dead are uneasy instead of at rest, their paths collide during a raging storm. Their attraction is immediate and undeniable, but can two such disparate destinies be entwined? Banwo makes you care deeply about the outcome and deftly weaves the realistic and the fantastic into a strange and compelling tapestry. With skill and heart, she has created a world readers will happily return to, even if they don't usually gravitate toward fantasy. A remarkable story that blends urban reality and Caribbean-infused magical realism.

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February 15, 2022
First-time novelist Banwo's vividly imagined Trinidad is a fitting backdrop for the love story of Darwin and Yejide. Darwin is a Rasta man compelled by circumstances to work in a cemetery as a gravedigger, much to the distress of his mother, whose faith makes it impossible for her to accept his job. Yejide is a young woman with a recently discovered matrilineal heritage that makes her crucial for helping the dead souls of Port Angeles move on to the afterlife. Sharp characterization and the richness of the language make this work of magic realism a truly immersive reading experience. Banwo demonstrates a deftness in balancing descriptive passages with a briskly narrated plot and makes this novel set in a cemetery an intimate exploration of life. She weaves in themes of parental neglect and abandonment, embracing adulthood, and navigating corruption within an intriguing mix of mythical folklore. This layering of the earthly and the otherworldly leaves the reader with much to reexamine long after the last page is turned.

COPYRIGHT(2022) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

February 1, 2022

DEBUT Set in a beautifully rendered alternate-universe Trinidad and Tobago, this first novel is a wonderfully crafted love story detailing the relationship between two young Trinidadians, Yejide and Darwin. The couple meet at Fidelis, a cemetery in the bustling city of Port Angeles where Yejide has come to inquire about specific burial rites for her mother. Darwin has reluctantly taken a job there as a gravedigger, which is in conflict with his Rastafarian upbringing and has also introduced him to a criminal enterprise involving his coworkers' use of the Fidelis grounds for ill-gotten gains. Banwo enriches the story of the couple's romance by introducing a magic realist element: Yejide's calling, inherited from her mother, is to escort the dead toward the afterlife, assisted by corbeaux, or black vultures. It is not a destiny that Yejide has accepted readily. VERDICT Banwo has penned a compelling and imaginative supernatural love story, offering vivid descriptions of local life and scenery that are matched by her application of the natural language rhythms. Though the novel's narrative pace is initially slow, Banwo wraps up with a redemptive and hopeful flourish that readers will appreciate.--Faye Chadwell

Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.