IMOW - Excerpt from Beasts of No Nation

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Excerpt from Beasts of No Nation
Uzodinma Iweala

United States

GALLERY

CONVERSATION

So if I am killing, then I am only doing what is right. I am singing song to myself because I am hearing too many voice in my head...

This is my song that I am singing all of the time wherever we are going to be reminding myself that I am only doing what soldier is supposed to be doing. But it is never working because I am always feeling like bad boy. So I am thinking, how can I be bad boy? Me, bad boy – somebody who is having life like I am having and fearing God the whole time.

I am learning how to read very early in my life from my mother and my father. When I am very small, before even my sister is born, I am always sitting with my mother on the floor of the kitchen and watching her washing all the plate. In the evening, I am always sitting on the floor just watching her with her buttom sticking high into the air and her breast touching her knee while she is working to make the kitchen so clean that not even fruit fly is wanting to put its egg inside.

I am liking to read so much that my mother is calling me professor. I am pulling her dress and she is saying to me, two more minute professor. Only two more minute. Then she is locking the door and holding my hand as we are walking to the main house. Inside, my father is always just sleeping or listening to his radio, so we would be moving quietly, getting matches from the wood table in the middle of the room lighting the lamp just in case they are taking the light.
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