Say You're One of Them

Although I don't often read short stories, the spine of this book caught my eye, and I'm glad it did. Uwem Akpan is a Jesuit priest from Nigeria who was educated in Kenya and the US. He says he wanted to write "a book about how children are faring in these endless conflicts in Africa. The world is not looking. I think fiction allows us to sit for a while with people we would rather not meet...I want their voices heard, their faces seen" (from an interview in The New Yorker quoted in the after matter). The result is a collection of five stories narrated by children who are trying to make sense of a violent world without the help of adults and often at the mercy of them.

In An Ex-mas Feast Jigana is waiting in a leaky shanty in Kenya for show more his twelve-year-old sister, Maisha, to return. She is a prostitute and the only reliable income for the family. Sniffing glue to stave off the pangs of hunger, Jigana argues with his parents that he would rather give up going to school than have Maisha move to a brothel to earn the school fees.

Fattening for Gabon is the story of ten-year-old Kotchikpa and his five-year-old sister Yewa. They are being raised by their uncle because their parents have aids. In an attempt to increase his fortunes, Uncle Fofo trades his wards for a motorcycle that he can use to illegally ferry more people across the Benin-Nigeria border. He is instructed to teach the children certain things in preparation for their journey to Gabon.

In What Language is That? a younger sibling talks about the relationship between two little girls who live across the street from one another in Ethiopia. They are best friends until sectarian violence breaks out, and their parents forbid them to speak to one another.

In Luxurious Hearses sixteen-year-old Jubril boards a bus of refugees bound for southern Nigeria. Ethnic cleansing has swept through the north, and despite considering himself a conservative Muslim, one who has willingly submitted to Sharia law, he is targeted by his friends for having Christian relatives. The bus is a microcosm of society as a whole and conflict between religions, genders roles, politics, civilian/military, and age consumes the passengers.

The last story, My Parents' Bedroom is the shortest but most devastating. Nine-year-old Monique is from a blended family. Her mother is Tutsi and her father is Hutu. One night she is told to watch her younger brother and to not open the door for anyone.

Despite their horrific nature, each story contains a moment of grace: an act of kindness that, although unable to mitigate the present, offers a glimmer of hope for the future. Sometimes a child can be saved, sometimes a person of one religion will protect a person of another religion, sometimes an adult is a safe person. But not often. And there are always consequences.

These stories are well-written and, with the exception of Luxurious Hearses which drags a bit, page-turners. I can't say I enjoyed reading this collection, but I am glad I read it. show less

Each one of these stories is a dagger through the heart. The stories in this collection are all seen through the eyes of children, and each story illuminates in gripping and heartbreaking detail and intensity the violence, strife and economic struggles to be found throughout Africa. Each story takes place in a different country, and through the eyes of the child protagonists, we are taken into the heart of poverty, child slavery and cold-blooded inter-tribal and inter-religion slaughter. The writing is stunning, bringing each character and each tragic situation fully alive in all its inhuman, but also human, intensity. This is a very rough book, but, I think, an essential one. Highest possible rating.

If you are looking for a book that will restore your faith in humanity and your hope for a brighter future for mankind, this is not the book you are looking for. The stories in this collection show kids in horrible situations, victims of the various evils their communities create for them, including extreme poverty, child trafficking, sexual molestation, murder, and genocidal violence. While the stories are fiction, they are based on real life, and bring to life several horrible events in recent African history that are often reduced to less unpleasant, safer narratives in news reports and history books. Kids all over the world are subjected to similar evils, so not only do these stories make the horrific conditions in parts of Africa show more disturbingly real, but they also show what kids closer to home are going through, from their own perspectives. Reading this book may not inspire readers to like humanity more, but it may lead to some rather fruitful discussions about what we are doing to ourselves and how we can make things better. show less

A collection of 5 short stories set in Kenya, Benin, Ethiopia, Nigeria and Rwanda respectively.

The writer relayed each story with great detail, which I found at times tedious. The pidgeon English spoken by most of the characters was, for me, also at times difficult to follow. And as I moved from one story to the next I quickly learnt to expect the inevitable horror of violence and genocide. I found the essence of the book very disquieting.

The author tells these stories in the voice of children, with their obvious naivety and trust in their familiars. There is no conveying of hope or suggestion of a solution to the tragedies that are perpetuated in each story. We are just left with the image of traumatised children left alone to fend show more for themselves in a cruel, hypocritical, crazy chaos. That's if they're not dead.

Certainly eye-opening to the chilling events going on in Africa. Akpan's writing certainly portrayed how the genocide impacts a family and their home on a very personal level. And I commend him on that ability. This is a subject that should be brought to the conscience of the world for action and not hidden because of the discomfort it may raise at the atrocities of what one man (or woman) may do to another in the name of race, religion, or money.

I understand his desire to make real the world of chaos that is Africa but I am sure that in reality there are some good news stories, and a sprinkling of that amongst the other stories would have helped me, as a reader, believe I could make a difference in some way with some action from my far removed and safe part of the world. All I have been left with is a sense of hopelessness and grief for the tragedy of lost or tortured souls. show less

I would have given this book 5 stars if the dialog had been easier to follow. There's a lot of French and other words thrown in the dialog so it was a bit hard to follow, but the narrative and actions around the dialog were clear and concise, so I was able to follow the stories well enough. Having footnotes at the bottom of pages with a translation would have helped.

These stories are NOT happy, so you cannot consider this a 'light' read, and as for enjoyable... well... I didn't enjoy it in the sense that I might enjoy a Stephen King or Nora Roberts novel or such. These stories are depressing, and are supposed to be. There's various topics - poverty, starvation, violence, slavery, child trafficking, violence between the government and show more citizens as well as violence over religion, violence between Tutsis and Hutus... the list goes on. Even a abused child here in America is better off than these poor kids, since at least here you have Child Protective Services, social workers, foster homes, you get the idea. The last story of this book (My Parents' Bedroom) reminded me of the movie 'Hotel Rwanda', since it was about the violence between the Hutus and Tutsis, though in the book it's especially more poignant since it's told from a child's perspective (all of these stories are)

This fact was hard to remember in 'Luxurious Hearses' because the narrator is 16 years old, but he actually sounds much older and more mature because of what he has been through, and I will say that after reading this book, I felt especially lucky that I was born and raised here in America. It's especially sad when you know that the stories in this book might be of fictional characters, but everything that happens - slavery, violence, etc - really does happen in Africa even today and you know that real children have to deal with this crap every day. It's awful, really. show less

Say You’re One of Them is a powerful collection of short stories. Told from the perspective of young children, the collection takes us into the brutality of the childrens’ lives in Africa. Each story is a slow awakening to unbelievable horrors for both the child and the reader. The first story, An Ex-Mas feast, looks at a poverty-striken family that must rely on their twelve year old daughter’s income to survive. She has to prostitute herself for food and money but she is trying to earn enough money so her younger brother can go to school. 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 show more suddenly say they cannot speak to each other anymore 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 hopes 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.

For me, the most powerful story is the last. I will forever hold the powerful images of a toddler playing in his slain mothers blood. Each story is a work of fiction, but is based on real situations that have transpired. In the Afterword, written by a pastor who knows the author, Uwem Akpan, the writer offers his belief that the publication of these stories is a bold attempt to enlighten readers about children of Africa, which in turn may create a passionate desire to create a safer place for children all over the world. After laying down this book, I know I am one of those affected people, and I thank Pastor Akpan for this powerful lesson.
Uwem Akpan was born in Ikot Akpan Eda in southern Nigeria. He was ordained as a Jesuit priest in 2003, and received his MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan in 2006. "My Parents' Bedroom", a story included in this, his first book, was one of five short stories by African writers chosen as finalists for The Caine Prize for African Writing. show less

Digital audiobook (abridged) performed by Robin Miles & Dion Graham
4****

This is a collection of short stories, dealing with various social issues facing African people throughout numerous countries on the continent. One story may deal with the Rwandan genocide (My Parents’ Bedroom), while another explores the competing goals of a family at Christmas (An Ex-Mas Feast), and yet another shows how a desperate uncle raising children orphaned by AIDS is coerced into an agreement he cannot keep (Fattening for Gabon). Two stories deal with the differences between Muslims and Christians (Luxurious Hearses focuses on a Muslim youth living with his mother in Nigeria’s north who is hoping to reunite with his Christian father in the south, show more while two six-year-old Best Friends in Ethiopia try to understand why their parents now tell them they must not play with one another (What Language Is That?).

All are beautifully written even when heart-wrenchingly difficult to read. Uwem focuses an unblinking eye on serious issues and while the reader is fortunate to not have to face such dilemmas, the reactions of the characters are totally understandable and relatable. The local English dialect used in some of the stories was sometimes difficult to get used to, but really gave a sense of place to the narrative.

The audiobook is abridged, with narrators reading only three of the stories. Still, Robin Miles and Dion Graham do a wonderful job of performing the text. And it is sometimes easier to understand the local dialect by hearing it than reading it on the page. show less