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Sankofa Book Club:

When We Were Birds

"Roots the reader in [Trinidad’s] traditions and rituals ... glorious matriarchy by which lineage is upheld. ... a depiction of ordinary life that’s full and breathtaking."—New York Times Book Review

Welcome back for 2023 to our Sankofa Book Club members!  You're in for a cultural treat as you read When We Were Birds, a new Caribbean based novel.  A mythic love story set in Trinidad, 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.

AYANNA LLOYD BANWO is a writer from Trinidad & Tobago currently living in London. Her debut novel When We Were Birds is an Indie Next Pick and has been named one of the UK Observer’s Best Debuts of 2022.  She is a graduate of the University of the West Indies and holds an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia, where she is now a Creative and Critical Writing PhD student. Her work has been published in Moko Magazine, Small Axe, PREE, Callaloo and Anomaly among others, and shortlisted for Small Axe Literary Competition and the Wasafiri New Writing Prize. She is currently at work on her second novel.

About the African American Research Library and Cultural Center 

The Broward County African American Research Library and Cultural Center (AARLCC) is located in the Sistrunk community, one of the oldest historically Black communities named for one of Fort Lauderdale’s first Black physicians. Opening to the public on October 26, 2002, AARLCC became the third public library of its kind in the United States dedicated to the study of Black history and culture. The 60,000 square-foot Center serves as a repository of materials related to the local, national, and international voices of the African diaspora with more than 85,000 books, manuscripts, artifacts, framed art, print, photography, audiovisual, and documents held in our Adult Services Section and Special Collections. The Youth Services Section features a special collection of Coretta Scott King Award books and the Ashley Bryan Art Collection from illustrators of African Descent. AARLCC also features a 5,000 sq. ft. museum, a 300-seat state-of-the-art theatre, and a Computer Training Center.

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