Black Moses

Black Moses is a novel by Alain Mabanckou. The novel centers Tokumisa Nzambe po Mose yamoyindo abotami namboka ya Bakoko, whose name means called "Let us thank God, the black Moses is born on the lands of the ancestors." and is terrorized by two orphans but later escapes his orphanage abode with the twins to the bustling town of Point-Noire.

Quotes

• I’m nothing, I’m everything,’ he declared. ‘The street is my mother. The sun is my father. What more should I ask of life?”
  • [1]

• The sweetness of honey does not soothe the bee sting.
  • [2]

• it would be fairer to say I have traveled widely, without ever leaving my own native soil, I've traveled, one might say, through literature, each time I've opened a book the pages echoed with a noise like the dip of a paddle in midstream, and throughout my odyssey I never crossed a single border, and so never had to produce a passport, I'd just pick a destination at random, setting my prejudices firmly to one side, and be welcomed with open arms in places swarming with weird and wonderful characters
  • [3]

• singing in the old-fashioned language of this good-hearted man, who sold us Hope at the lowest possible price,
  • [4]

• A fly’s not a bird just because it can fly.
  • [5]

• When the white people came to Africa, we had the land and they had the Bible. They taught us to pray with our eyes closed: when we opened them, the white people had the land and we had the Bible.
  • [6]

• I want to cry now, not later! I want to be the first because if I cry after the others how will we know that I cried too?
  • [7]