Ayanna Lloyd Banwo’s When We Were Birds was selected as a LoveReading Star Book and Debut of the Month for very good reason. Set in the fictionalised Trinidadian city of Port Angeles, it tells a unique and lyrical tale of love, life and loss, the rituals of death, and ancestral legacies and connections. 

Centred around a young man who’s recently arrived in the city to work as a gravedigger, and a young woman whose mother bequeathed her the gift of seeing the dead, this is a richly-layered book, with visceral, visual writing and themes that invite contemplation and evoke very personal responses. All of which means it’s the kind of powerful story you want to share and talk about — ideal for book club discussions. 

Before you dig into the reading group questions below, read our review of When We Were Birds. You might also want to discover other great novels your book club could discuss, and explore more reading group questions.

1. Discuss the meaning and impact of the title. 

2. How would you describe the author’s style? Did you find it easy to engage with? Did you notice any shift in style and pace as the novel progressed?

3. “Maybe this is what it mean to be a man. Doing the things you never think you would have to do, making a hard choice when the only thing in front of you is hard choices”. What does the novel reveal about notions of manhood and adulthood? What “hard choices” do Darwin and Yejide have to make? What does the novel say about choice versus destiny?

4. Darwin’s new boss believes “where a man from always matters. Tell you what kinda man he is, what he stands for”, while Darwin states, “It doesn’t matter where I come from”. Who’s right? What’s the significance of this early exchange? What does it reveal about Darwin’s character, and the novel’s wider themes?

5. Related, what does the novel reveal about connections to our roots and ancestors? Did the author’s exploration of this theme resonate with you?

6. Darwin: ‘“You putting me out, Ma?” He can’t bear to turn around. He don’t want to see the answer in her eyes’.

Yejide: “what she feel for her mother was never simple”

Discuss the complexities of motherhood revealed in the novel. Compare Darwin and Yejide’s backgrounds and family relationships.

7. Recently widowed Mr Julius remarks, “The hardest thing in the world is to be a good man. You always end up failing somebody”. Is this borne out in the novel? Do the characters “end up failing somebody”?

8. How effective was the author’s interweaving of the real world with the myth and magic of the corbeaux story?

9. “You still a child…you still think love is something nice”, Petronella declares to Yejide. Is it naive to think of love as “something nice”? To what extent is When We Were Birds a love story?

10. Yejide first appears to Darwin as a “woman walking up to the gate of the bone yard with a storm around her head”. How does this description presage their later relationship? Why does he think she “could deal with the trouble he is in” before they’ve properly met?

11. Discuss the author’s use of storm imagery, and images of nature and landscape.

12. “Find you? Jah know I never leave you, Emmanuel”. What did you think of the end of the novel? How did you feel after reading it?

13. If you were to recommend When We Were Birds to a friend, how would you summarise it?