When We Were Birds by Ayanna Lloyd Banwo is a novel set for IGCSE and International GCSE Literature (Cambridge International 0475). The board decides the set texts and the years they are examined, and your school confirms them. Our teachers teach whichever text your child sits.
What it is
The novel is set in Port Angeles, a fictional city in Trinidad where the living and the dead live close together. Darwin, a Rastafarian from the countryside, takes a job as a gravedigger at the Fidelis cemetery. Yejide grows up in Morne Marie in a family of women who can speak with the dead.
After her mother Petronella dies, Yejide inherits that gift. The two meet at the cemetery, and their relationship is tested by secrets, danger and the claims of the past. Birds are important symbols throughout.
Banwo uses heat, noise and tradition to make magic feel ordinary. The story asks what the living owe the dead.
Themes and ideas to track
Death, grief and the connection to ancestors
The novel treats death as part of daily life, not a distant fact. Rituals and inherited gifts show how people live alongside their dead.
Love and connection across difference
The central relationship brings two people with different burdens together. It explores what intimacy can heal and what it cannot.
Inheritance, duty and choice
Characters are shaped by family expectations and roles handed down to them. The story weighs the pull of duty against the wish for a self-determined life.
Place, culture and identity
The setting is drawn with care, including its language, beliefs and social divisions. It shapes how the characters understand themselves.
How the writer builds it
Banwo combines magical realism with a grounded, sensory picture of the city, so supernatural events feel natural. The narrative moves between perspectives, and the voice carries Trinidadian cadence and idiom. Birds recur as a symbol linking the living and the dead.
Look for how language, imagery and structure keep death close to ordinary life. Because this is a recent novel, rely on your own close reading.
How to write about it in the exam
Because the novel is recent and unfamiliar to many students, ground every claim in precise, accurate reference to the text. Plan paragraphs around ideas, such as how magical elements are made believable, and analyse language choices, voice and structure rather than recounting events.
Use short references and explain the effect of dialect, imagery and symbol. Show that you understand how the setting is part of the argument, not just a backdrop.
Studying When We Were Birds? The paid trial lesson can start with a key moment from the text.
An exam-style question to practise
How does Banwo present the relationship between the living and the dead?
Plan three points before you write, with a short quotation for each. Then check your plan against the mark scheme section below.
More question angles
- Explore the ways Banwo uses the setting of Port Angeles to shape the novel's meaning.
- How does Banwo use symbolism, especially birds, in the novel?
- Discuss how Banwo presents ideas about love and duty.
How this maps to the mark scheme
Examiners mark Literature answers against assessment objectives. These are the skills the paper rewards. For Cambridge International 0475, the objectives are summarised on our qualification page.
- AO1: Show detailed knowledge of the content of literary texts in the three main forms (drama, poetry and prose), supported by reference to the text.
- AO2: Understand the meanings of literary texts and their contexts, and explore texts beyond surface meanings to show deeper awareness of ideas and attitudes.
- AO3: Recognise and appreciate ways in which writers use language, structure and form to create and shape meanings and effects.
- AO4: Communicate a sensitive and informed personal response to literary texts.
- The four assessment objectives carry equal weight, about 25% each.
For When We Were Birds, build your argument around “Death, grief and the connection to ancestors” and “Love and connection across difference”. Support each point with a short quotation. Then analyse the writer's method, using the section above.
Keep context about Ayanna Lloyd Banwo brief and tied to the words on the page.
Read the text alongside these notes. This page is our own analysis and original teaching material. We quote at most a short attributed phrase where a point needs it, so keep your copy of the novel open as you read.
Where to go next
Plan your essay with our guide to planning a literature essay, then see a worked answer in our literature essay structure model response. Browse more set-text notes or read about Literature in English tuition.
When you have written an answer on When We Were Birds, a paid one-hour trial lesson lets the teacher who would continue mark it with you.