Say You're One of Them
by Uwem Akpan
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Book Reviews of Say You're One of Them
Book Review: Unforgettable, Beautiful, Authentic and Wise
Summary: 5 Stars
Uwem Akpan is a Nigerian Jesuit priest and writing teacher living in Zimbabwe, and his stories are garnering much acclaim. Just a few pages into his debut collection, it is easy to see why. Beautiful and devastating, the five tales found in SAY YOU'RE ONE OF THEM are at once compelling and painful to read. All told from the narrative perspective of a child in crisis, they symbolize a continent in crisis as well. Set in African hot spots like Ethiopia and Rwanda, the stories revolve around themes of family and identity, religion and ethnicity, all complicated by violence, fear and poverty.
A destitute family in Nairobi inhales glue to stave off hunger and watches their 12-year-old daughter turn to prostitution in "An Ex-mas Feast." Two little girls in Ethiopia --- one Muslim, one Christian --- are best friends until religious tensions and riots in their city force them apart in "What Language is That?" Both these stories are short yet highly effective. The three remaining tales, however, are even more amazing and heartbreaking.
The nine-year-old girl at the center of "In My Parents' Bedroom" is forced to watch as the horrors and injustices of contemporary Rwanda play out in her house, each of her parents having to take opposing sides. In less than 30 pages, Akpan spins a brilliant tale that entrances and repulses, capturing the complexities of the situation and reminding readers that there are real lives at stake beyond this fiction.
In "Fattening for Gabon" two young siblings are being raised by a kindly and affectionate uncle as their parents lie dying of AIDS in their home village. Kotchipka and Yewa are spoiled and feasted by their uncle's new friends, but Kotchipka realizes that he and his sister are in grave danger and tries to resist their charms. By the end he knows he must fight for his own survival and that of his little sister, or be sold into slavery.
"Luxurious Hearses" is the story of a 16-year-old Muslim boy escaping from one end of Nigeria to the Christian region and the home of the father he has never known. Pretending to be a Christian, he finds himself stuck on a bus full of Catholics and Pentecostals, not to mention a tribal chief of the indigenous religion. As the stuffy, overcrowded bus sits and awaits its driver, wave after wave of tension ripple through it, threatening violence. Differing political views and beliefs find common ground in a hatred of Muslims, and Jubril --- far from his family and having been turned against by other Muslims --- must keep up his façade, all the while praying to Allah for help. The bus becomes a microcosm of a divided nation, and Jubril's internal exploration of identity and personal history is symbolic of the confusion, faith, hopes and fears of its citizens. Akpan takes readers on Jubril's fascinating journey and delivers a surprising and very memorable ending.
In each story Akpan uses language, often a broken but lyrical English, to show the similarities and differences between the diverse peoples of Africa. Because of this, along with powerful plots and sympathetic narrators, SAY YOU'RE ONE OF THEM is an unforgettable, beautiful, authentic and wise literary call to action. Akpan's book is highly recommended and will leave readers wanting more of his dark, carefully moralistic and quite extraordinary tales.
--- Reviewed by Sarah Rachel Egelman
Book Review: Electrifying and Harrowing
Summary: 5 Stars
Uwem Akpan has created an astonishing collection of five short stories; two of them are over 100 pages and can easily be termed novellas. Each employs a different tone, but all of them have one thing in common: they focus on young children and how they're faring in the endless conflicts that define many countries in Africa.
The strongest of the stories, I believe, is My Parent's Bedroom, written in first person from a Rwandan girl who is the child of a Tutsi mother and a Hutu father. Within the course of the story, her father is forced to make an excruciating choice and she will need to gather all her courage to survive. The sheer power of this story took my breath away and made me cringe about the unspeakable acts that humans do to other humans.
Fattening for Gabon -- the novella -- is also an astonishing literary achievement, partially because Akpan pieces together the various dialects -- English, French, and African dialects -- to create characters that are distinctly memorable. Here, a ten year old brother and his five year old sister slowly realize that their uncle is attempting to sell them into slavery. As the story unfolds with all its horrors, the young boy must make decisions that someone three times his age would struggle with. It's survival...but at what cost?
The reader meets young Kenyan children in makeshift shanties who are forced to sniff glue to quell their hunger and prostitute themselves to survive; young Christians and Muslims who must sacrifice friendship because of forces they don't understand; a Muslim amputee who has only his faith and his wits to survive.
In this story, Akpan writes, "This was not the time to think about Islam or Christianity or God too much. It was a time just to be a human being and to celebrate that. What mattered now was how to get people to lay down their weapons and biases, how to live together." As it is throughout history, a belief that one's religion is right and the other is wrong leads to agonizing conflicts. Combine poverty and chaos and situations arise that defy the human brain.
These immersions into children's minds in the worst of situations will stay with me and haunt me for a long, long time. This author writes with a perspective that is rare, a humanity that is great, and an openness that is authentic and harrowing.
Book Review: Art In The Horrific Details
Summary: 5 Stars
Stories of abused and battered children in Africa are legion, but few cut as close to the bone as this collection by Uwem Akpan. His five tales, two of which are novella length, are told with the uninhibited, truth-filled voices of the children involved. Each one takes place in a different country but the theme is universal: the biggest challenge faced by children in Africa is staying alive.
Akpan, a Jesuit priest with an MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan, piles on details available only to one intimately familiar with the lives described. Be forewarned: some of those details are gruesome to the point of causing distress, which I am sure was his intent. The imagery can range from the droll, like the description of the motorbike loaded with five people, various fruits and vegetables, a rooster and five rolls of toilet paper in "Fattening for Gabon," to the most horrific sight a child can see, a parental bloodbath, in "My Parents' Bedroom." This story ends the book and is the source of the title "Say you're one of them," the command given by a desperate Rwandan Tutsi mother to her Hutu-fathered child as machete-wielding killers approach.
Various dialects are used masterfully to both reveal characters and set scenes. The jargon, slang, and foreign phrases may be off-putting to some readers, but little meaning is lost when the dialogue is read in full context. Quite frankly, the only time many readers can bear to imagine events like those in the book is when they take place on foreign shores. We can be sickened and outraged by horrors on another continent; the same happenings across the street from where we live would paralyze us with fright. Fortunately, Akpan's familiarity with African poetry infuses much of the writing, giving the book a lyrical tone that keeps the more violent passages from slipping into slasher-movie territory.
As a person who has photographed and written about Africa extensively, I must confess I was not shocked by Akpan's stories. Unfortunately, tales like them are all too familiar to me. I was deeply moved by his dramatic intensity, however, and highly appreciative of his ability to put the reader inside the children's lives.
Dave Donelson, author of Heart of Diamonds: A Novel of Scandal, Love and Death in the Congo
Book Review: Powerful and heartbreakinig
Summary: 4 Stars
Reviewed by Kam Aures for RebeccasReads (6/08)
"Say You're One of Them" is a collection of short stories written by Uwem Akpan, a Jesuit priest born in Nigeria. His inspiration to write comes from "the people who sit around my village church to share palm wine after Sunday mass, by the Bible, and by the humor and endurance of the poor." All proceeds from this book will be going to his religious order, the Jesuits.
Each of the five stories in the book envisions what life is like for children in different African nations. For example, in the first short story in the book, "An Ex-Mas Feast", the tale is told of an eight-year-old Kenyan boy named Jigana, and the lengths his family must go to in order to survive. When there is no food, Jigana's mother has the children sniff glue as this act suppresses the children's appetites until their next meal. Most of the money that the family has is earned by his twelve-year old sister Maisha who works the streets as a prostitute. It is heartbreaking to see what these children endure in order to keep their family's heads above water.
Some of the language used throughout the book is a little difficult to understand and there were many instances in which I had to reread passages in order to understand what was being said. Here is an example of Akpan's writing style taken from the first story: "We shall pay school fees next year. No more randa-meandering around. No more chomaring your brain with glue, boy. You are going back to school! Did the rain beat you and Baby?" (p.8) There are quite a few native non-English words and sentences peppered throughout the novel that you can usually decipher based on the context but, in my opinion, somewhat hinder the natural flow of the book.
Although the book is a work of fiction, the stories really make you think and feel for the children of these African countries, as some of these stories are all too close to home for the impoverished among them. The writing is powerful and will make you think about things in a whole new way. Akpan is a truly talented writer, and I think that his work is a very important one and will be instrumental in opening the eyes of the world to the plight of these people.
Book Review: Short stories that make you think!
Summary: 5 Stars
This group of short stories by Nigerian-born Jesuit priest, Uwem Akpan, is absolutely stunning. I mean that in two distinct ways.
First, the stories are wonderfully constructed with characters that come alive on the page. The descriptions of family/village/street life in Nigeria, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Benin and Kenya are often both detailed and horrific. Which leads to the second way in which the stories are stunning - the difficulties experienced by the young protagonists in these stories continued to stun me long after I put the book down.
In "An Ex-Mas Feast," Uwem Akpan takes us to the seedy street world of Nairobi, Kenya, where a family - parents and children, live off of the earnings of the twelve-year-old daughter who sells herself to rich men in fancy cars. Some of the earnings are supposed to help her brother go to school. He is bright, sensitive and knows what is going on - and is not happy about it.
The children in "Fattening for Gabon" are being prepared for sale into slavery by their uncle. In "What Language Is That?" two little Ethiopian girls are best friends until their parents suddenly say they cannot speak to each other ever again because one is Muslim and the other is Christian. In "Luxurious Hearses" a Nigerian boy from the north is trying to escape to relatives in the south - on a bus filled with the same religious animosity that he hope to escape. The final story, "My Parent's Bedroom" describes the violence between the Rwandan Hutus and Tutsis as seen through the eyes of a young girl who has mixed parentage.
These stories all are full of hatred and humanity, love and unspeakable evil. They bring some understanding to news from African nations and make it feel personal.
Uwem Akpan does use quite a bit of native dialect in the speech of the characters. He also sprinkles it with many non-English words. A brief glossary at the end of the book would have been useful. I could understand the terms in context, but I'm afraid that subtle and possibly not-so-subtle nuances were lost.
Armchair Interviews says: Up close and personal with people in these countries.