Fiction Short Stories (single Author)
THINGS THAT START SMALL BUT SWEET
- Publisher
- Griots Lounge Publishing Canada
- Initial publish date
- Aug 2020
- Category
- Short Stories (single author), General
- Recommended Age
- 18
- Recommended Grade
- 12
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9781777275600
- Publish Date
- Aug 2020
- List Price
- $18.00
Classroom Resources
Where to buy it
Description
For the better part of our lives, we pass through this struggle to live, to exist, to invest and to be heard. Our worlds stand in the gap between what we are and what we want to become. So, we work everyday to break through that invisible border between planting and harvesting. Things that Start Small but Sweet is a collection of twelve stories about the lives of many genuine characters, faced with numerous challenges and tears, the desires to be heard. Each story, each voice, of a child in a slum settlement, of immigrant youths, of women that are uncertain, of the non-inclusive government and of the many voices that are not heard even when they scream. It is about suffering and smiling while living. It is also about happiness and the many victories of the urban poor, and also the rich that possess them.
About the author
Awards
- Runner-up, ANA/ABUBAKAR GIMBA PRIZE FOR SHORT STORIES
Contributor Notes
BIBI UKONU is an architect, poet and novelist. He is published online, and in print magazines, such as Pyramid Magazine and Twilight Musings of the International Library of Poetry. He is also the Editor of CityDezigns Magazine, and writes about Architecture and Sustainable Development. THINGS THAT START SMALL BUT SWEET is his second collection of short stories.
Excerpt: THINGS THAT START SMALL BUT SWEET (by (author) B.I.B.I. UKONU)
At Akanja’s shrine, Ndukamkpa made known the plans he had been harboring a few years after he lost his job at the brewery in Awo. He had just nailed corrugated roofing sheets as a covering for a few timber columns he had collected from construction sites that had no more need for them. And because he believed he was God-sent, he visited Akanja that early Saturday morning, before those who slept at night could stretch their bones before the orange-colored lights of the morning. He said many things to Akanja and he dropped three tubers of Igbo yam and one cockerel. Akanja smiled as Ndukamkpa dropped the gifts close to the burning incense on the bare red mud that finished the floor. Akanja was not new to his wishes, as many men of God had visited his shrine requesting powers to perform all sorts of weird and unbelievable phenomena, even the ones Akanja found hilarious. And Akanja, the renowned voodooist and conjurer, would always ask them out of his shrine because he believed one needed to be loyal to his god. But that morning, as Ndukamkpa walked into the shrine and made known his desire to grow his new church, Akanja cringed and obliged him the comfort of his wooden stool.
