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Great story to teach children about the power of their inner conscious

“There is a voice inside of you that whispers all day long, I feel that this is right for me, I know that this is wrong.”

This poem is about a narrator who listens to the voice inside their head and decides to follow it. This poem teaches the great lesson that kids should listen to their inner voice and trust their instincts

A group of misfits find themselves thrown together by circumstance in the dangerous, complex place that is Lagos. The best character in this novel is Lagos and the character we get to know best is the complex Minister of Education. The weaving of loyalties and circumstances is a thing of beauty.

It's Amos Tutuola so it's bonkers! 🤪
While all of the novels I've read by Tutuola are episodic, this one is actually a collection of short stories, folklore retellings with a bit less of the darkly macabre & horror that inhabits his other works, which isn't to say people don't get eaten, bits chopped off them or get transformed into creepy-crawlies.
Perhaps familiarity affects my perception: I found these marginally less interesting but still 3½⭐

“If we continue to pay "bad" for "bad", bad will never finish on earth.”

I guess Tutuola's thought is a reframing of "An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind." It's from a tale that channels a similar vibe to the Judgement of Solomon story, though the wisdom lies not with the king in this version.

And now for something completely different...

A short volume of Amos Tutuola's stories drawn from Nigerian Yoruba folklore 🇳🇬

‘People who know loss know this : there‘s nothing harder to let go of than an already-gone thing‘

Jagua traveled to Lagos in her youth to make it in the big city. When we meet her in her 40s things haven‘t gone as planned, she‘s meeting men at Tropicana in exchange for many and at the same time she has a relationship with a 20 yr younger man. And then things take a turn.

And that cover, it‘s eye catching