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Author : Uwem Akpan Publisher : Little, Brown and Company Manufacturer : Little, Brown and Company
Description
Uwem Akpan's stunning stories humanize the perils of poverty and violence so piercingly that few readers will feel they've ever encountered Africa so immediately. The eight-year-old narrator of "An Ex-Mas Feast" needs only enough money to buy books and pay fees in order to attend school. Even when his twelve-year-old sister takes to the streets to raise these meager funds, his dream can't be granted. Food comes first. His family lives in a street shanty in Nairobi, Kenya, but their way of both loving and taking advantage of each other strikes a universal chord.
In the second of his stories published in a New Yorker special fiction issue, Akpan takes us far beyond what we thought we knew about the tribal conflict in Rwanda. The story is told by a young girl, who, with her little brother, witnesses the worst possible scenario between parents. They are asked to do the previously unimaginable in order to protect their children. This singular collection will also take the reader inside Nigeria, Benin, and Ethiopia, revealing in beautiful prose the harsh consequences for children of life in Africa.
Akpan's voice is a literary miracle, rendering lives of almost unimaginable deprivation and terror into stories that are nothing short of transcendent. (2008)
Customer reviews for 'Say You're One of Them'
«Say... you're one of them!»
When psychologists treat childhood victims of trauma - war, violence or sexual abuse - they will often use props such as dolls or drawings to re-enact the event in a safe environment without judgment. These five stories are in a way voices of the child victims of Africa, told through the prop of fiction (a doll, a drawing), empty of ideological or political concern. Uwem Akpan has given nameless invisible victims a voice that is understandable and easily empathetical by people everywhere.
The title is a portmanteau. It can be read as "Say your one them", as in, when the bad guys come, say your one of them to save yourself. Or with a change of emphasis, it can be read as "Say.. you're one of them!" One is defensive and inclusive, the other is offensive and exclusive, the two meanings can be found in all the stories. In other words, Africa has many divisions, but it can also be made whole by finding a common humanity, if one chooses to see it that way.
This is a good book and I recommend it. If your short for time the two best stories are "Fattening for Gabon", about an uncle who sells his two younger family members into slavery. It's novella length but as the story slowly unfolds, it imperceptibly descends into a living nightmare, ending with a piercing scream that echoes forever. "My Parent's Bedroom" about the genocide in Rwanda has very powerful imagery that - like the scream in the first story - will haunt and become iconically associated in your mind with the traumas of Africa.
[Thursday, November 13, 2008]
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«Dark tales, from the Dark Continent»
These stories of central Africa took me to places I didn't know existed, and didn't want to think could exist.In these stories, children endure the brunt of the worst kinds of human misery. With their hungry bellies and their quiet dignity, they also bear witness, as though they are standing in for us, the unknowing and naive, taking inventory of the horrors of ethnic wars and their relentless, unassailable poverty.The adults in the story who haven't gone mad with hatred, drugs, greed and fear, are simply gone. There is a kind of authenticity to these stories, and a moral tone that nudges the reader toward compassion, and beyond that, the kind of outrage that makes it feel imperative to do something, large or small, to change these children's lives. Its an unflinching, brave collection, and it will rightly disturb.
[Thursday, October 09, 2008]
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«uneven but worthy voice to Africa's children»
Akpan seeks to give voice to Africa's suffering children.* Each of his stories portrays children or adolescents caught in the midst of an African tragedy, whether it's Rwanda's genocide, child trafficking in West Africa, or the grinding poverty of street life in Kenya.
Each of the stories delves and yield insight into challenges that most Western readers can barely fathom. Akpan strives and often succeeds in capturing the confusion, uncertainty, and stress that life imposes on many of the world's children. Not all the stories are equally captivating: Luxurious Hearses drags while My Parents' Bedroom is excellent (while almost inconceivably tragic).
Here are the stories, from the strongest to the weakest. I highly recommend the top two and recommend the rest.
1. My Parents' Bedroom - Rwandan genocide
2. An Ex-mas Feast - street family in Kenya
3. Fattening for Gabon - child trafficking in West Africa
4. What Language Is That? - religious strife in Ethiopia
5. Luxurious Hearses - violence in Nigeria
I hope that Akpan keeps writing. I will read.
Professional reviews readily available:
New York Times: Charles Taylor (from Liberian warlord to NYT book reviewer!), "Can I Get a Witness?" 27 July 2008
Entertainment Weekly: Jennifer Reese, "Say...," 6 June 2008
PopMatters: Carolyn Fanelli, "Say You're One of Them," 29 August 2008
Chicago Tribune: Alan Cheuse, "Say You're One of Them," 31 May 2008
O, the Oprah Magazine: Vince Passaro, "Amazing Grace," June 2008
The Independent (UK): Alastair Niven, "Say...," 11 July 2008
[Thursday, October 09, 2008]
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