Uwem AkpanBesprekingen

This was a hard read. A lot of colloquial language that kept me from truly relating to the characters. Some stories were better than others and he definitely conveys the anguish of tribal conflicts in Africa. But I wanted to be more invested in it.

Author interview and discussion guide included.

This was powerfully compelling book. Yet at the same time, a very difficult read. Africa is truly a land of suffering. And no one suffers more than the children. This is a collection of short stories told from the point of view of the children coping with some of Africa's most troubling problems. There are tales of childhood prostitution, childhood slavery, religious rioting between Muslims and Christians, and ethnic cleansings. All too often the only defense these innocent children have is to attempt to blend in, to remain unnoticed, to "Say You're One Of Them." Sadly, as the book demonstrates, this defense doesn't always work.

A collection of short stories by Nigerian writer Uwem Akpan, first published in 2008.
Containing five stories, each set in a different African country.
Stories
"An Ex-Mas Feast": is told from the viewpoint of a young boy living in a Nairobi slum.
The boy is given glue to sniff by his mother to quell his hunger, while his 12-year-old sister works as
a prostitute and contemplates deserting her desperate failing family.
"Fattening for Gabon": is a novella set in a small sea-side town on the outskirts of Lagos, near the border
between Nigeria and Benin. It is about a 10-year-old boy (who narrates) and his younger sister whose parents
have died of AIDS. Initially glad to be taken in by their uncle, the boy slowly begins to realize that he and
his sister are to be sold into slavery. With the payment for them, a new motorbike, already having been delivered,
the deal cannot be cancelled.
"My Parents' Bedroom": is set in Rwanda and again written in the first person, tells of a young girl with some
neighbours hiding in the ceiling of her parents' room while other adults of her hometown, neighbours and strangers
alike, take part in a brutal killing spree.
"Luxurious Hearses": another novella, it tells the story of a Muslim boy in Nigeria, disguised as a Christian,
attempting to make his way to a safe area in the midst of mass religious riots between the two faiths.
"What Language is That?": is about two young girls in Ethiopia, one Christian, one Muslim, who are forced to
break their friendship as religious tensions explode in their community.[4]
Uwem Akpan is a Nigerian writer.
Uwem's short stories and autobiographical pieces have appeared in the special editions of
The New Yorker, the Oprah magazine,Hekima Review, the Nigerian Guardian, America, etc.
https://www.uwemakpan.com/
Erin Lovett
ELovett@wwnorton.com

This was a good read. I couldn't always figure our what countries the stories were set in but in some ways that didn't matter. Very good stories.

Ekong Udousoro is attempting to curate stories about the Biafra War. He winds up landing a fellowship to work alongside an American publisher in Manhattan where he attends meetings and works amongst others reviewing possible future contracts.

New York, My Village seamlessly shifts between Ekong’s life in the present day to accounts of the war from his collection of stories and from his friends and family. It'd be nice to say that there were no similarities to be drawn between past and present but that simply isn't the case. We watch rampant racism happening amongst the well educated colleagues at the publishing house, which is the one place you would expect such a topic to be a non-issue. If racism is happening between members of a higher academic standing, what does that mean for every other place one has to go throughout their daily life.

Between the strong fluent prose and the metaphors woven through the story there is so much to gain from reading this book. Uwem Akpan has managed to write a book that you want to read, even while it's making you uncomfortable, and its a book that stays with you a makes you think, hopefully inspiring the reader to outrage and action to help society evolve past the hateful and wrong attitudes of too many of its members.

I cannot recommend this book enough. There is some potential for this book to go far and make a splash in our literary world and our hearts given enough people pick it up. It will certainly be worth your time.

Thank you to netgalley and publisher for an advance e-copy for my honest review. All opinions expressed here are my genuine reactions to reading this book.

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 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.

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, 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.

Horrifying, sobering, here and there a little tedious. More of a "good for you" read than a "you'll enjoy it" read.

This book is very Hard to read. If you at all in a bad place do not read it.

I'm really torn about this book. On the one hand, Akpan tells a crucial and gripping story about violence and the horrors of war upon children. We can't ignore these fallen voices. On the other hand, I feel like people *already* have this perception of Africa as a continent of violence, of genocide, of poverty. And if there's anything I've learned from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's amazing talk, "The Danger of a Single Story," it's this: we cannot reduce a complex history to a single story. Therefore, I won't be teaching this in a survey course but will instead save for a seminar in a more focused conversation about diverse African (or even Nigerian) writers.

That said, the story, "My Parents' Bedroom," would make an interesting conversation piece if you needed a short story unit.

Three short stories and two long stories or novellas. The short stories were readable, even engaging. The long stories were painful. An author's first effort, and it felt like it.There is no doubt there is some talent there, but there also seems to be a lot of inexperience. Not something I would recommend to anyone.

Universal Wants and Needs of Children

In "Say You're One of Them," author Uwem Akpan tells the stories of several children across the African continent in three short stories and two novellas. The stories are disheartening, abrupt, and visceral. Akpan shows what children want from the world.

In order to understand the stories, some cultural background is helpful. It is important to know about the Christian/Muslim conflict in Nigeria and Ethiopia, the Hutu/Tutsi conflict in Rwanda, the devastation of AIDs, and so forth. A tremendous amount of background knowledge is not needed, however a bit certainly helps. In addition, the reader needs to be ready to empathize, try to understand, both the adult villains and the child victims.

The longest story is "Luxurious Buses." The story takes place over the course of a day-and-a-half as a teenager flees south on a bus. Readers learn about many different conflicts in present-day Nigeria, not only the Christian/Muslim conflict, but the conflict between local communities and oil companies, traditional leaders and modern democracy, police and civilians, as well as traditional religions and modern ones. I am sure there are other conflicts that Akpan, a Nigerian, could have included, but this small community on a bus provides plenty of opportunities to show the depth of disputes in the country. There were a few times, however, when the narrative in this novella dragged on too long.

The other novella, "Fattening for Gabon," is confusing at first, but the narrative is consistently attentive and cinematic. Two children have been taken in by their uncle who is having second thoughts about selling them to an overseas couple. The well-described action works well because readers develop empathy for the small family. Readers become invested in the outcome.

The short stories also focus on children and that is the strength of Akpan's writing. He shows how truly innocent they are, how their wants are universal. The children in "Say You're One of Them" want to love, to be warm, and to play. This is what children anywhere want. Unfortunately, as Akpan so carefully shows, those wants are not universally known.

All short stories. Different things that others must deal with to just make it each day.

All short stories. Different things that others must deal with to just make it each day.

A yong brother and sister cope with their uncle's attempt to sell them into slavery.

This book's a punch in the gut.

In the interview printed at the end of the book, originally from the New Yorker interview by Cressida Leyshon, Uwem Akpan says, "I would like to see 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..."

Also, this was Oprah's 2009 pick for her book club, if she dictates your reading list.

Uwen Akpan has a very important message he wants to share with you, but he does not have the skills to communicate them. This is unfortunate; the perspective of the child in modern Africa is one that has not been explored thoroughly enough.

Each of these short stories is set in a different country in modern-day Africa and is narrated by a child (two of the "stories" are more like novellas at over a hundred pages each). Akpan tackles issues such as child prostitution, slum life, slavery, race relations, and religion, but there is a striking lack of empathy and emotion in the writing that takes away from the stories. The biggest problem with this collection is the slang dialect and phonetic spelling which makes the stories absolutely unreadable at times.

If you want to read about Africa, skip this one and pick up some Chinua Achebe instead.

these are unforgettable, haunting, disturbing stories about Africa that are so well written, and so hard to read. Proceed with caution!

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 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.

The dialogues were just too incomprehensible at times! I was so glad that I somehow survived this!

Review:Say You’re One Of Them by Uwem Akpan.

A collection of five remarkable short stories, well written and the reality accounts of the children’s strength during the most agonizing circumstances. The stories are set in Africa and told from a child’s perspective. Some of the writing style of words were misused due to the translation from another language but understandable for the reader. The stories were set in different areas as Nigeria, Kenya, Rwanda, Ethiopia, and Benin and all about children and their dangers, perplexing lives, their searches for fragments of reprieve and among the existence of poverty, family loss, and trying to survive. The children deal with issues of slavery, religious turmoil, abandonment, and ethnic life and death situations.

Some of the reading is heartbreaking but Uwem Akpan managed to tell their stories with dignity, using poised honesty and genuine openness of situations through the voices of the children involved. Some issues are gruesome and hard to read but as the reader I felt the children’s pain and emotions and I think that was the author’s intent.

Everyone of these stories are different and sensitive and the reality is that no child should live under these circumstances. There’s a family who lives in a makeshift shanty in urban Kenya has no way to find gifts of any kind for their children with the upcoming of the Christmas Holiday and has no food for a Christmas dinner. A Rwanda girl tells about her family’s struggles to uphold the impression of normalcy amid unspeakable acts. A young brother and sister frighten with their Uncle’s attempt to sell them into slavery then he is murdered and they are abandoned once again. A young Muslim boy summons his faith to bear a treacherous ride across Nigeria. Through the eyes of a young child and his friends they feel the emotional toll of religious conflict in Ethiopia which leads to tragedy. This is just a microcosm of Africa’s turmoil and children are losing their childhood to soon….½

Beautifully rendered stories of children in precarious situations beyond their control. Heartbreaking and touching. These are children of Africa during challenging times, stories of families from a child's point of view.

Uwem Akpan is an important voice. I like his writing ethic; he cares about details and getting them right. I listened to this on audio as well as the interview with the author at the end.

An Oprah Book Club book - so it is depressing. Oprah Book Club and depressing are synonymous.. Does she ever pick a happy book? I won't read a book because it is an Oprah Book Club, I might read it in despite of that.

The CD had 3 of the 5 stories from the book.

My Parents Bedroom is about the horrible fighting between the Hutus and the Tutsis. I hadn't heard of the Twa before this CD.

An Ex mas Feast Do they really say ex-mas? I was so annoyed at the boy throwing away his future because his sister left.

What Language is That a young Christian Ethiopian girl doesn't understand why she can no longer be Best Friends with her Muslim neighbor.

Powerful writing
By sally tarbox on 27 Jun. 2012
Format: Paperback
Five short stories focussing on the experiences of young people in different African countries. It's powerful writing that leaves an unforgettable impression: for me the most outstanding and horrifying story was 'Fattening for Gabon' which is narrated by a young boy in Benin. When his uncle and his dodgy friend start telling him and his sister they're going to start a wonderful new life in Gabon, the child gradually realises they're not telling him the whole story...

A child of a mixed marriage in war torn Rwanda...a fraught bus journey south in Nigeria, where a Muslim youth has to conceal his background...a poor Kenyan family faces a wretched rainy Christmas in their shack... Akpani brings home to us the human side of situations that we only see on the news.