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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)
Say... you're one of them!
| Customer Rating:  | 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. |
Dark tales, from the Dark Continent
| Customer Rating:  | | 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. |
uneven but worthy voice to Africa's children
| Customer Rating: | 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
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Beyond Genius...Tales of Stolen Childhoods
| Customer Rating: | | wow. this book is AMAZING. it's a masterpiece: the plot, the style, the words are simply genius. the way akpan describes these stories is incredible! yes, the book makes you think, yes it's eye-opening, but even more than that, it touches you as a fellow human being. as a reader, i felt connected to the characters. as an african, i understood their hardships. as a nigerian, i praise this author! this book is wonderful on SOO many levels. akpan delicately portrays childhood innocence and how that innocence is artfully stolen. an EXCELLENT read. the stories are splattered with words from the various vernacular dialects, so if you're not african are aren't familiar with african dialects, you'll have to work to understand it. but, it's worth the effort!!! i'm looking forward to reading from this author again. |
Unforgettable, Beautiful, Authentic and Wise
| Customer Rating: | 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 |
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