Brother Crow
By: Vivian Phillips Ngũgĩ uses the tropes and symbolism of folklore to highlight the absurdity of the corrupt and ingenuity of the disenfranchised in Wizard of the Crow. Kamitl and Nyawira are at the point of begging while trying to survive in a corrupt system that when finally cornered by the police, Kamitl invokes almost a bastardization of a Deus ex Machina by creating a warning sign that the house the police are trying to barge into is under the ownership of The Wizard of the Crow. This sends the police into a panic and they're immediately scared off by the ideas of bad omens and the threat of witchcraft. This is accidental mysticism empowers the powerless and frightens those with power. Which got me thinking... Out of all the things the "Wizard" could be of, why a crow? Going back to the tropes of folklore, on a surface level it makes sense, crows are everywhere in humanity's stories, but couldn't Wizard of the Eagle or Wizard of the Lion se...