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When We Were Birds
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Sydney Darius, Wendell Manwarren
- Length: 8 hrs and 41 mins
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Publisher's Summary
A mythic love story set in Trinidad, Ayanna Lloyd Banwo's radiant debut is a masterwork of lush imagination and exuberant storytelling—a spellbinding and hopeful novel about inheritance, loss, and love's seismic power to heal.
“Heartwarming and heartbreaking, fantastical and familiar, with characters that burrow their way into your heart and mind with their tragedies and triumphs, When We Were Birds more than sings, more than beams. It is the kind of story that makes you want to spread your arms open wide, embrace the sky, and take flight in your own little way."—Robert Jones, Jr., New York Times bestselling author of The Prophets
"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, New York Times bestselling author of Black Leopard, Red Wolf
In the old house on a hill, where the city meets the rainforest, Yejide’s mother is dying. She is leaving behind a legacy that now passes to Yejide: one St Bernard woman in every generation has the power to shepherd the city’s souls into the afterlife. But after years of suffering her mother’s neglect and bitterness, Yejide is looking for a way out.
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 the only job he can find is grave digging, he must betray the life his mother 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, an ancient and sprawling cemetery, where the dead lie uneasy in their graves and a reckoning with fate beckons them both.
Critic Reviews
Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2022 by The Observer, BuzzFeed, Essence, Nylon, Good Housekeeping, Business Insider, NBC, Ms. Magazine, Book Riot, and more
"A thoroughly original and emotionally rich examination of love, grief and inheritance…. When We Were Birds is full of life. Ms. Lloyd Banwo ensures that the scenes it hosts are packed with drama, color and tension, particularly in her gripping finale…. The rhythms of Ms. Lloyd Banwo’s narrative voice help keep the reader rapt. Like the corbeaux - vultures which, in the author’s invented mythology, escort dead souls to the afterlife - her novel takes flight and soars." (The Economist)
"[A] spellbinding novel.... The poetic prose in Ayanna Lloyd Banwo’s debut novel captivates from the start.... When We Were Birds is a unique love story whose magical setting in Trinidad takes center stage." (Real Simple)
"[A] masterly debut novel. It announces an important new voice in fiction, at once grounded and mythic in its scope and carried by an incantatory prose style that recalls Arundhati Roy’s hugely impactful debut, The God of Small Things…. Her writing draws on grief, but Lloyd Banwo’s literary gift lies in her capacity to transfigure that emotion - to conjure a cosmic landscape where the living coexist among the dead." (The Observer)
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What listeners say about When We Were Birds
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Nikki
- 04-22-22
very good book
This was one of the best books I ever listened to, I think because it brought back memories of home to me.
it was very relatable and flowed very nicely. At the beginning, it was a bit hard to understand Darwin's roll, but as it developed I really got the sense of it all.
very good book
2 people found this helpful
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- Meghan
- 04-21-22
Please write more books!!
This was by far my favorite book so far this year! Ayanna’s language is unbelievably descriptiveand lyrical. I would recommend a listen over a read in this case to hear the gorgeous Trinidadian accent of the narrators. The story has elements of magical realism, the universal, and the out right original. I can not wait to read more work from Banwo.
2 people found this helpful
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- Ifayemisi
- 07-13-22
PERFECTION!!!
The narrators were perfectly selected to weave this familiar yet new story. I haven't read a love story in a while, I haven't wanted to but this wasn't some simpleton romance, this was warm and sexy and human. My blackness was treated with tenderness and softness that reminded me of the strength of vulnerability that I am not allowed in this fat, dark-skinned vessel. Bravo!
1 person found this helpful
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- Raphaëlla
- 06-14-22
Good Story
This was a really interesting book. Caribbean culture is so similar, although most of us are separated by bodies of water. I remember reading Zora Neal Hurston's Tell My Horse and the duppies and zombies of Jamaica and Haiti, and this book brought back some of the excitement I felt when reading TMH (non-fiction). If you are also from the Caribbean, this book will have you laughing at some of the narrative, because you can see your own family members speaking some of the lines and behaving the way the characters did.
Frayed Mother-daughter relationship, sweet love and support, and some villains. I would have wanted to hear more about how the birds really played into this story and how certain characters got their 'power', but maybe the author plans on coming out with parallel stories?
1 person found this helpful
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- Kindle Customer
- 05-29-22
Book of the dead
Walking dead, talking dead, smoking-cigarettes dead. Dead bodies in bags, dead bodies in coffins, dead bodies in a graveyard. Probable murder, attempted murder, prevented murder. All amid a budding romance. What a strange book.
1 person found this helpful
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- LaKetia Franklin
- 04-14-22
Gripping story
This was a gripping story with just enough romance and lore to keep me engaged. Really enjoyed the characters and want to know more about how their “story” continues. Great listen!
1 person found this helpful
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- Lala
- 03-26-22
Amazing!!!!!!!
Thank you, Ayanna, for the wonder that is this novel. I was enraptured in the story, in the sound of my accent telling it. just... thank you!
1 person found this helpful
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- Tanya
- 02-13-23
enjoyable story
i liked this one. the plot posed an interesting take on life and death, and the narrators really brought the story to life beautifully. try it!
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- Kaye Tucker
- 01-27-23
Beautifully written
I enjoyed this book will probably listen to it again because I’m sure I missed something…
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- Charisse
- 12-15-22
loved the narrators
Author writes beautifully, it was a little hard to follow the female character at first, I would still recommend the read.
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Story
Barbados, 1962. Lost soul Iapetus roams the island, scared and alone, driven mad after witnessing his father’s death at the hands of his mother and his older brother, Cronus. Just before Iapetus is lost forever, he has a son, but the baby is not enough to save him from himself—or his family’s secrets. Seventeen years later, Iapetus’s son, the stoic Atlas, lives in a loveless house, under the care of his uncle, Cronus, and in the shadow of his charismatic cousin Z.
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Hits all the emotions and exposes generational cycles
- By Rainbow 🌈 on 07-03-22
By: Jasmine Sealy
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Miss Muriel and Other Stories
- By: Ann Petry
- Narrated by: Amber Reauchean Williams, Ryan Vincent Anderson
- Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
A young Black girl watches as her aunt’s multiple suitors disrupt her family’s privacy. The same girl, now on the cusp of adulthood, shares her family’s growing fears that her father has disappeared. Acclaimed author Ann Petry penned these and the other unforgettable narratives in Miss Muriel and Other Stories more than 70 years ago, yet in them, contemporary listeners recognize characters who exist today and dilemmas that recur again and again.
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Riveting
- By BA on 03-04-23
By: Ann Petry
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The Last Dreamwalker
- By: Rita Woods
- Narrated by: Nedra Marie Taylor
- Length: 11 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In the wake of her mother's passing, Layla Hurley unexpectedly reconnects with her mother's sisters, women she hasn't been allowed to speak to, or of, in years. Her aunts reveal to Layla that a Gullah-Geechee island off the shore of South Carolina now belongs to her. As Layla digs deeper into her mother’s past and the mysterious island’s history, she discovers that the terrifying nightmares that have plagued her throughout her life and tainted her relationship with her mother and all of her family, is actually a power passed down through generations of her Gullah ancestors.
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A decent read
- By Monica Peltier on 01-31-23
By: Rita Woods
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What the Fireflies Knew
- A Novel
- By: Kai Harris
- Narrated by: Zenzi Williams
- Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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An ode to Black girlhood and adolescence as seen through KB's eyes, What the Fireflies Knew follows KB after her father dies of an overdose and the debts incurred from his addiction cause the loss of the family home in Detroit. Soon thereafter, KB and her teenage sister, Nia, are sent by their overwhelmed mother to live with their estranged grandfather in Lansing, Michigan. Over the course of a single sweltering summer, KB attempts to navigate a world that has turned upside down.
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Heart-Wrenching Story of Complex Love & Loss
- By Nicole Estes on 01-27-23
By: Kai Harris
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Portrait of an Unknown Lady
- By: Maria Gainza
- Narrated by: Kyla García
- Length: 4 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In the Buenos Aires art world, a master forger has achieved legendary status. Rumored to be a woman, she specializes in canvases by the painter Mariette Lydis, a portraitist of Argentinean high society. But who is this absurdly gifted creator of counterfeits? What motivates her? And what is her link to the community of artists who congregate, night after night, in a strange establishment called the Hotel Melancolico? On the trail of this mysterious forger is our narrator, an art critic and auction house employee through whose hands counterfeit works have passed.
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hard to follow the narrator
- By RR on 06-13-22
By: Maria Gainza
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Vagabonds!
- A Novel
- By: Eloghosa Osunde
- Narrated by: Arit Okpo, Atta Otigba, Eloghosa Osunde, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
As in Nigeria, vagabonds are those whose existence is literally outlawed: the queer, the poor, the displaced, the footloose and rogue spirits. They are those who inhabit transient spaces, who make their paths and move invisibly, who embrace apparitions, old vengeances and alternative realities. Eloghosa Osunde's brave, fiercely inventive novel traces a wild array of characters for whom life itself is a form of resistance. Blending unvarnished realism with myth and fantasy, Vagabonds! is a vital work of imagination.
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One of the best books of 2022
- By Geonn Cannon on 03-19-22
By: Eloghosa Osunde
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The Island of Forgetting
- A Novel
- By: Jasmine Sealy
- Narrated by: Varia Williams
- Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Barbados, 1962. Lost soul Iapetus roams the island, scared and alone, driven mad after witnessing his father’s death at the hands of his mother and his older brother, Cronus. Just before Iapetus is lost forever, he has a son, but the baby is not enough to save him from himself—or his family’s secrets. Seventeen years later, Iapetus’s son, the stoic Atlas, lives in a loveless house, under the care of his uncle, Cronus, and in the shadow of his charismatic cousin Z.
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Hits all the emotions and exposes generational cycles
- By Rainbow 🌈 on 07-03-22
By: Jasmine Sealy
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The Trees
- A Novel
- By: Percival Everett
- Narrated by: Bill Andrew Quinn
- Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Percival Everett's The Trees is a must-listen that opens with a series of brutal murders in the rural town of Money, Mississippi. When a pair of detectives from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation arrive, they meet expected resistance from the local sheriff, his deputy, the coroner, and a string of racist White townsfolk. The murders present a puzzle, for at each crime scene there is a second dead body: that of a man who resembles Emmett Till.
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Great story, uneven performance
- By HH on 04-14-22
By: Percival Everett
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Patience Is a Subtle Thief
- A Novel
- By: Abi Ishola-Ayodeji
- Narrated by: Liz Femi
- Length: 11 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
For as long as she can remember, Patience Adewale, the eldest daughter of Chief Kolade Adewale, has been waiting for confirmation that she is loved, that there is a place where she truly belongs. Patience lives a sheltered life within the secure walls of the family’s mansion in Ibadan, but finds no comfort from her distant father and stepmother Modupe. Her only ally is her younger sister, yet even Margaret’s love and support cannot overcome Patience’s insecurity and uncertainty.
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Patience
- By Black Butterfly on 07-09-22
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The Wild Hunt
- By: Emma Seckel
- Narrated by: Ruth Urquhart
- Length: 8 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Leigh Welles has not set foot in on the island in years, but when she finds herself called home from a disappointing life on the Scottish mainland by her father's unexpected death, she is determined to forget the sorrows of the past and start fresh. Fellow islander Iain MacTavish, a RAF veteran with his eyes on the sky and his head in the past, is also in desperate need of a new beginning. A young widower, Iain struggles to return to the normal life he knew before the war. But this October is anything but normal. This October, the sluagh are restless.
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Good story
- By Politically Incorrect on 11-18-22
By: Emma Seckel
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Rust & Stardust
- A Novel
- By: T. Greenwood
- Narrated by: Thérèse Plummer
- Length: 10 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Camden, NJ, 1948. When 11-year-old Sally Horner steals a notebook from the local Woolworth's, she has no way of knowing that 52 year-old Frank LaSalle, fresh out of prison, is watching her, preparing to make his move. Accosting her outside the store, Frank convinces Sally that he’s an FBI agent who can have her arrested in a minute - unless she does as he says. This chilling audiobook traces the next two harrowing years as Frank mentally and physically assaults Sally while the two of them travel westward from Camden to San Jose.
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WOW!
- By Karack on 08-13-18
By: T. Greenwood
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The Last Suspicious Holdout
- Stories
- By: Ladee Hubbard
- Narrated by: Adenrele Ojo, JD Jackson
- Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Story
The twelve gripping tales in The Last Suspicious Holdout, the new story collection by Ladee Hubbard, deftly chronicle poignant moments in the lives of an African American community in a “sliver of southern suburbia.” Spanning from 1992 to 2007, the stories represent a period during which the Black middle class expanded while stories of "welfare Queens," "crack babies," and "super predators" abounded in the media. Characters spotlighted in one story reappear in another, providing a testament to the enduring resilience of Black people in the “post-racial” period.
By: Ladee Hubbard
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Things They Lost
- By: Okwiri Oduor
- Narrated by: Christel Mutombo
- Length: 11 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Ayosa is a wandering spirit—joyous, exuberant, filled to the brim with longing. Her only companions in her grandmother’s crumbling house are as lonely as Ayosa herself: the ghostly Fatumas, whose eyes are the size of bay windows, who teach her to dance and wail at the death news; the Jolly-Annas, cruel birds who cover their solitude with spiteful laughter; the milkman, who never greets Ayosa and whose milk tastes of mud; and Sindano, the kind owner of a café no one ever visits. Unexpectedly, miraculously, one day Ayosa finds a friend.
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Story impeccably written and read
- By Ryan C. Bango on 08-03-22
By: Okwiri Oduor