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Say You're One of Them

3.39 of 5 stars 3.39 · rating details · 7,424 ratings · 1,676 reviews

Each story in this jubilantly acclaimed collection pays testament to the wisdom and resilience of children, even in the face of the most agonizing circumstances.

A family living in a makeshift shanty in urban Kenya scurries to find gifts of any kind for the impending Christmas holiday. A Rwandan girl relates her family's struggles to maintain a facade of normalcy amid unspe...more

Hardcover, 358 pages

Published September 18th 2009 by Little, Brown and Company (first published June 2008)

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May 29, 2011 Petra X rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, travel-adventure

Its difficult to justify giving this book five stars as there are so many problems with it.

Firstly, two of the stories are novellas of considerable length and extremely difficult to read. This is because, in an effort to give local flavour to the dialogue, letters are transposed, French words, local words and words that seem to have no meaning but are used for emphasis pepper the text. It does actually add to book, but it means its a slow read and there is no natural rhythm to the speech.

Second...more Its difficult to justify giving this book five stars as there are so many problems with it.

Firstly, two of the stories are novellas of considerable length and extremely difficult to read. This is because, in an effort to give local flavour to the dialogue, letters are transposed, French words, local words and words that seem to have no meaning but are used for emphasis pepper the text. It does actually add to book, but it means its a slow read and there is no natural rhythm to the speech.

Secondly, the stories in the novellas unfold very slowly indeed. Almost like a big wave coming that you expect to crest and collapse in a spume of foaming water but instead just rolls over itself smoothly. Not exactly an anti-climax, just not what you expected.

Thirdly, there is a lack of emotional involvement in events so horrific they demand a reaction, you want to feel the horror of the author but no, he is detached.

So why five-stars? Because it is part of the uniqueness of the book that it is written in such a different way. A more conventional rendering of the stories that are all aspects of children's experience of tribal and religious wars in the '90s, would not have given us the same involved and emotional experience: its for us to be part of it and to feel it, not just to read it.

I often read in people's reviews that they cried at the end of the book, well I usually take that with a pinch of salt, perhaps I am hard-hearted, but with this book, it would be difficult not to feel that sting behind your eyes with the ending of the last story. Its also well worth reading the very short interview with the author included at the end.

It is, in short, a brilliant book that will give you something of the reality of children in those circumstances that all the documentaries in the world won't. Those are stories filmed and reported from a Western, foreign point of view whereas the book is the African experience of those events best told as stories by an author who lived through those devastating and murderous times.(less)

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Sep 22, 2009 Chuck rated it 2 of 5 stars

Uwem Akpan graphically portrays horrendous conditions in several African countries -- child trafficking; prostitution; rape; murder, religious conflict; Sharia-mandated amputations; starvation; etc. These stories are no doubt grounded in fact, but two defects in the collection detract from its potential power. First, the various narrators describe terrible circumstances in such a detached reportorial, matter-of-fact way that the lack of emotional engagement has the unfortunate effect of disengag...more

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Jul 05, 2008 Dave rated it 5 of 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 a...more 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.

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Feb 25, 2011 Renee rated it 4 of 5 stars

Nigerian author Akpan is a master of depicting gritty scenes of chaos and fear in this collection of five not so short stories set in war-torn Africa. Akpan deals with topics such as slavery, religious conflict, genocide and poverty, and if these topics weren't powerful enough, they are ten times more so as they are told through the eyes of children. In addition, I listened to this book on audio and the readers captured the authenticity of the various African languages and dialects. These storie...more

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Jan 03, 2009 Clare rated it 5 of 5 stars

What I learned from this book is that I need to know more about the history and political situation in Africa. Akpan has a gift for writing from the viewpoint of children who suffer due to poverty and violence. It is my fault, not his, that I didn't understand these stories better. I am somewhat familiar with the terrible violence that has occurred in Rwanda due to tribal conflict. Thus the story, "My Parent's Bedroom", was very clear to me. It was also terribly frightening.
The first story I re...more

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Nov 29, 2009 Shannon (Giraffe Days) rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, short-stories, 2009, novella

This cover has one of the most beautiful photos - I kept seeing it in the bookshop, picking it up and dithering but ultimately putting it down again. In the end, a few people on Goodreads got me interested in it - they were talking about how it was the latest book in Oprah's book club but that they'd read the sample story and it was so depressing and they didn't want to read something that upset them.

That actually made me want to read it. I want to be confronted, to be challenged, to be emotiona...more

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Oct 27, 2008 Allison rated it 3 of 5 stars

I decided to read this book because of popular review. People loved it. Time loved it. Essence loved it. Entertainment Weekly loved it. Maybe I should have checked my sources--all owned by Time Inc. (duh)--but I figured that a book generating this much positive press would be worth reading.
I won't go back on this opinion--it was worth reading. It was as about worth reading as most other books I have read: nothing spectacular, but not a waste of my time, either. What seemed wasteful in Akpan's bo...more I decided to read this book because of popular review. People loved it. Time loved it. Essence loved it. Entertainment Weekly loved it. Maybe I should have checked my sources--all owned by Time Inc. (duh)--but I figured that a book generating this much positive press would be worth reading.
I won't go back on this opinion--it was worth reading. It was as about worth reading as most other books I have read: nothing spectacular, but not a waste of my time, either. What seemed wasteful in Akpan's book was the way that the lengthiest stories were the least effective. Perhaps it was their length that diluted them; perhaps if they had been shortened to the size and style of the stories that impacted me the most, that left me what felt like a taste of experience or shock, they would have felt like less of a chore to read.
On the positive end, the longer stories gave me more of a sense of the character narrating them. "Fattening for Gabon" and "Luxurious Hearses" are both 136 pages, and I had the clearest pictures of Kotchikpa and Jubril respectively by the end of each of their stories. This is only logical, however, since at the end of a full-length novel, you fully expect to know the characters, or else you will have lost interest by page 150. I also felt I understood Jigana, the eldest son and narrator in "An Ex-mas Feast" quite well despite its shorter 34-page length. This is probably because the story did not attempt to accomplish much aside from depicting family dymanics, and told from a very distinctive point of view, this can create a story in and of itself.
My favorite story was the book's title story, "My Parents' Bedroom," in which Monique's mother tells her, "When they ask, say you're one of them." For someone like me who finds titling works of writing incredibly hard, I found this a stroke of brilliance. The title fits the story collection perfectly. Meanwhile, this story had the most impact on me, not just because of its violence--the other stories certainly contained violence--but because of the narrator's ability to withhold understanding of what was occurring around her so that I, the reader, also did not know until she had figured it out. And what she cannot understand, I cannot understand, as if I am her age, living inside of her. Usually I hate being confused at the actions of other characters in the story. But here, "not knowing" only makes sense, and it makes the story come alive.
Short stories are a tough genre, and Akpan does indeed deserve acolades for his endeavors. I just need to remember, in the future, not to read books on recommendation from the press. I am almost always, in some capacity or other, disappointed.(less)

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Aug 07, 2010 Michele Torrey rated it 5 of 5 stars

Even as one who has spent considerable time in Africa, "in the trenches," so to speak, one who has many African friends, I cannot say that I truly understand Africans. Their different ways of thinking, their cultures, their perceptions, often leave me, a white Western woman, bewildered and exasperated. Should I spend the remainder of my life among them, I believe I would always be aware of the vast gulf of understanding that stands between us and my own ingrained and presumptive Western ideologi...more

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Dec 22, 2009 Alan rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: short-stories, read-in-2009

just picked up from the library.
Read the three short-ish ones and they, particularly 'My Parent's Bedroom' have knocked me down with their power...

later: still reeling from this one. He's not the greatest writer in the world - the three short pieces are superbly done, but the longer pieces - novellas really - are too long, repetitive, relying on exposition too much. But that doesn't seem to matter, you forget the difficulties of dealing with the odd dialects, French and 'African' English because...more just picked up from the library.
Read the three short-ish ones and they, particularly 'My Parent's Bedroom' have knocked me down with their power...

later: still reeling from this one. He's not the greatest writer in the world - the three short pieces are superbly done, but the longer pieces - novellas really - are too long, repetitive, relying on exposition too much. But that doesn't seem to matter, you forget the difficulties of dealing with the odd dialects, French and 'African' English because everybody in the stories is alive and you could meet them, you know their fears, humour, hopes. Of course the outrageousness of their fates throw their fragile lives, mostly children, into such relief it becomes almost unbearable, but Akpan copes admirably with that, there is no sentimentality, just a clear eye. Akpan knows that these fates, murder, violence, slavery, prostitution, hunger, AIDS, are ordinary events there. These things, particularly mob violence with machetes, poverty relieved by glue sniffing, the shame/fear of revealing who you are because of the consequences are rendered with the acuteness and skill that maybe does mark him out as a future great writer.

I could quote loads but maybe this passage that just came open will help:

The Wizard is Papa's father's brother. He is a pagan and he is vey powerful. If he doesn't like you, he can put a spell on you, until you become useless - unless you're a strong Catholic. The colour of his skin is milk with a little coffee. He never married because he says he hates his skin and doesn't want to pass it on. Sometimes he paints himself with charcoal, until the rain comes to wash away his blackness. I don't know where he got his colour from. My parents say it's a complicated story about intermarriage. He's so old he walks with a stick. His lips are long and droopy, becasue he uses them to blow bad luck and disease into people. He likes to frighten the children with his ugly face. Whenever I see the Wizard I run away. Papa, his own nephew, doesn't want him in the house, but Maman tolerates the Wizard. 'No matter, he's our relative,' she says. Tonton Andre, Papa's only brother, hates him even more. They don't even greet each other on the road.

You find out later why Papa doesn't like the Wizard.

There is a deep humanity in this book, a reaching out to people, and a mind that is open and trying to understand (even though the writer is a Jesuit priest there is no bias in the book, importantly dealing with Muslim-Christian antagonism). Worth a hundred stars.
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Jan 29, 2009 Maggie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Say You’re One of Them is a heartbreaking collection of short stories (or, rather, two novellas and three short stories), each set in a different country in Africa. A champion of children, Uwem's collection shines a clear light on the harsh realities of life for many African kids.

In each of these stories, innocence collides with corruption. Set in Benin, “Fattening for Gabon” depicts an uncle who, as the guardian of two AIDS orphans, plans to sell his young charges into slavery. In “An Ex-Mas Fe...more Say You’re One of Them is a heartbreaking collection of short stories (or, rather, two novellas and three short stories), each set in a different country in Africa. A champion of children, Uwem's collection shines a clear light on the harsh realities of life for many African kids.

In each of these stories, innocence collides with corruption. Set in Benin, “Fattening for Gabon” depicts an uncle who, as the guardian of two AIDS orphans, plans to sell his young charges into slavery. In “An Ex-Mas Feast,” a twelve-year-old girl takes to the Nairobi streets, prostituting herself so that she can feed her family and raise money for her younger brother’s school fees, as he's the sole hope of the destitute family. And in the horrifying “My Parents’ Bedroom,” two Rwandan children bear witness to the unspeakable as their Hutu friends and family members form a violent, mindless mob set on ridding their community of its Tutsi residents. It isn't pretty to think about the things that these children are forced to witness and endure, however these fictitious stories are the reality of many kids, and it's a truth that far too many of us would rather ignore.

Since author Uwem Akpan is also a Jesuit priest, it is hardly surprising that religion permeates these stories, but never in a way that is dogmatic. Rather than choose sides, Akpan instead highlights the innocent victims of religiously-fueled hatred. In the elegantly simple “In What Language Is That?,” a little Ethiopian girl is no longer allowed to see or speak to "Best Friend" because she is Christian and her little friend is Muslim. Although violence is implied rather than illustrated in this piece, the reader just the same feels the dismay of these two little ones who fail to see the difference between them. Following that is the novella “Luxurious Hearses,” which depicts a sixteen-year-old orthodox Muslim boy who, born Catholic, becomes a target of resentment and fear in his own Islamic community, and then again amongst the Christian refugees he tries to flee south with after a violent Islamic uprising in his native Nigeria. And while I felt that this piece was the weakest of the bunch, its ending remains seared in my memory.

Although I generally found the novellas to be less affecting than the short stories - which were somehow more powerful for their conciseness - all five of these pieces are piercing and powerful, and Akpan's prose is positively beautiful despite the ugly subject matter. In short, Say You're One of Them is a startling collection by an important author. Whatever Akpan writes next, I will read.(less)

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Jun 26, 2008 Jeffrey rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: classics-above-others, fiction, required-reading

Say You’re One of Them by Uwem Akpan

Tragic, frustrating, majestic, bewildering are all words I would use to describe this short story collection. I have never read so many sad tales that did not come out of Russian literature. This collection is breathtaking in so many ways that mere words do no justice. Akpan is a true artist that paints with words a world so tragically wrong that it bothers you to your core. To know that such a world exists shames us all. Yet the writing is so beautiful that...more

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Feb 12, 2009 Julie added it

Shelves: africa-theme-setting, read-2009, contemporary-fiction

This isn't a work to which I can assign stars- it would be like ranking tourist visits to concentration camps- this one was more interesting, that one was more intact, the other had the best museum shop, when in fact they are all horrific and unforgettable.

To further the analogy, reading Uwem Akpan was like reading Elie Wiesel- devastating and heartbreaking, with details as vivid and palpable as yesterday. The difference is that decades of history and a Western world romance with WWII have almo...more

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Apr 04, 2013 Candice rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This isn't a a book that's easy to read, but it is a book worth reading. It will take you out of your comfort zone, it will force you to address human atrocities easy to ignore, and it will open your eyes to other realities other people's fates.

These may not be 'real' stories, not facts to assign to real people, but they are based on real events. They are fictionalized immersions into a world too many people have turned a blind eye to.

I reccomend reading the stories from first to last. I would n...more

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Jan 29, 2012 Lindsay marked it as didn-t-finish

I agree with Petra X's and Chuck's reviews. Ultimately my rating hinges on the fact that I'm an outside reader and I find some of the dialogue arrhythmic, and the renderings cold. It's true you could argue that the author uses dialect and stoic descriptions to reflect the reality and sometimes complacency of the circumstances portrayed. Perhaps it's a clever enthymeme to build our sympathy and understanding. But in a collection clearly written for an outside audience, the syntax reads too much l...more

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Feb 04, 2010 Laurel rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, historical-fiction

I have always been drawn to Africa and thus to stories about Africa. As such, this book seemed right up my alley. In the end, though, it was a bit of a disappointment for me. While the stories overall were well-told, the characters seemed detached and somehow lacking in depth. For whatever reason, I just couldn't get fully absorbed. This is one of those books I'd like to revisit when I am able to read the print version. I feel like I missed something with the audio... it was too easy for me to t...more

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Dec 08, 2012 guiltlessreader rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: reads-2012, africa, favourites

My heart aches for the children in Africa. This is one of those rare books that deeply moved me. (Review coming soon)

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Feb 05, 2009 Bookmarks Magazine added it

Hailed as "a major literary debut" (San Diego Union-Tribune) and "brilliant" (USA Today), Uwem Akpan's collection Say You're One of Them fulfills the promise of his 2005 short story, "An Ex-Mas Feast," in the New Yorker. Without flinching or lecturing, Akpan shares the almost unimaginable horrors that threaten Africa's most vulnerable children. A Jesuit priest, he also evokes the love, grace, and other spiritual values that can emerge from the fight for survival. Critics universally praised Akpa

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Apr 11, 2013 Tommy V rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: ebooks

A street boy spends Christmas with his family and hopes they can stay together. A brother and sister prepare for a life of childhood slavery. Two young girls, one Christian and one Muslim, are forced to abandon their budding friendship. A teenage Muslim boy is scared to reveal his identity on a bus full of vengeful Christians. A half-Hutu, half-Tutsi girl watches her family destroy itself. These are the central characters we meet in Uwem Akpan's Say You're One of Them, a 2008 collection of stori...more A street boy spends Christmas with his family and hopes they can stay together. A brother and sister prepare for a life of childhood slavery. Two young girls, one Christian and one Muslim, are forced to abandon their budding friendship. A teenage Muslim boy is scared to reveal his identity on a bus full of vengeful Christians. A half-Hutu, half-Tutsi girl watches her family destroy itself. These are the central characters we meet in Uwem Akpan's Say You're One of Them, a 2008 collection of stories that also serves as the author's book debut.

Akpan is a Nigerian Jesuit priest with an ability for writing poignant and heartbreaking tales about the dark continent, choosing to view life through the eyes of the most innocent--children. He takes his central ideas from real-life African tragedies. For example, he sets "My Parents' Bedroom" in 1994 Rwanda, at a time when the majority Hutu tribe and the ruling Tutsi tribe were massacring each other in the name of ethnic cleansing. This is beyond the comprehension of nine-year old Monique, whose father is Hutu and mother is Tutsi. Her mother adds to the confusion by telling Monique, "When they ask you, say you're one of them," without specifying who "they" are. But she quickly learns, in horrific fashion, the wisdom of her mother's words.

The first story in the collection, "An Ex-Mas Feast," first appeared in The New Yorker a few years ago and served notice that Akpan pulled no punches. It tells the tale of a Nairobi street family who is struggling not only with day-to-day living but also with keeping the family together. Jigana is a boy who is preparing to begin school after the Ex-Mas holiday. He is troubled, though, because his school fees are draining his family's resources. An older sister works as a child prostitute while he and his younger sister take turns begging for money on the streets with their baby brother. With this premise, Akpan weaves incidents where the family has to quickly react to threats from fellow slum dwellers as well as unsympathetic police and the older sister's johns.

Sometimes it helps to understand the culture Akpan describes. For example, in the Kenyan story I mentioned above, it may prove useful to know that the school year begins in January and that there is no public education--all schools charge a yearly tuition. Akpan also deftly mixes sheng, which is a hybrid of Swahili and English, in the dialogue which adds to the realistic detail of the story but again may be confusing to an English reader not familiar with what he is doing with the language.

At other times it seems like Akpan is displaying his writing assignments from the University of Michigan, where he received an MFA in creative writing. The book runs the gamut of narrative story-telling, moving from the more familiar first-person and third-person past tense to second-person past tense and first-person present tense. For example, "What Language is That?," about two Ethiopian kindergarten girls who practice different religions, is told in second-person. Though the use of different tenses perhaps are a way of involving the reader (the Rwandan story told in present tense captures how fast the country moved to chaos), the subject matter in the stories are captivating enough and thus I found it unecessary to have the various narratives.

The best of the stories contained in Say You're One of Them, in my opinion, are the longest ones. "Fattening for Gabon" tells you right from page one that the main character and his little sister are being sold into slavery, yet Akpan is able to maintain the right balance of tension and suspense until the climactic deed. Over the story's 130 pages, the reader learns some of the culture of two West African countries, Benin and Gabon.

"Luxurious Hearses" is set in Akpan's home of Nigeria. He quickly gets the reader up to speed on the political turmoil involving the northern and southern parts of the country, the military generals who run the show, and the oil companies who pump money into their coffers. However, all of this is background to the central story of a Muslim teenager named Jubril who privately questions his faith in the face of an impending war between Christians and Muslims. He is on a cross-country bus ride with Christians and it is interesting how Akpan points out the differences between various Christian religions and whether any of them are open to Jesus' message of loving thy neighbor as thyself.

Uwem Akpan has helped African literature claim a stake in the 21st century. I look forward to reading more from this young talent.(less)

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Dec 08, 2012 William Hayes added it

Why do we read books like Say You're One of Them?

The answers to this question, it seems to me, cluster about two different, but not unrelated notions.

Here is a sampling of comments printed on the jacket of the edition that I have read, arranged in those two clusters:

PRAISE for the writerly skills of the Author

"rendered with clarity and grace"
"well-crafted" by "a writer of rare gifts"
"at any page a stunning sentence will leap out"

PRAISE for the readerly content of the Stories

"imagine the unimagin

...more

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Nov 12, 2012 Delicious Strawberry rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: uwem-akpan

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 s...more

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Sep 19, 2012 Kim rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012, african, round-the-world-in-257-books

It took me a while to find my next round-the-world book. I started two other books and 150 pages in decided that it was just a waste of more time to finish them.
And then I found this book

Uwem Akpan is a Nigerian Jesuit priest, and an author shortlisted for the Caine Prize for African writing, and longlisted for The Guardian First Book Award. And this book was a New York Times bestseller.
Not a combination that happens often I wouldn’t think.

This book is actually a series of five stories, unrelat...more It took me a while to find my next round-the-world book. I started two other books and 150 pages in decided that it was just a waste of more time to finish them.
And then I found this book

Uwem Akpan is a Nigerian Jesuit priest, and an author shortlisted for the Caine Prize for African writing, and longlisted for The Guardian First Book Award. And this book was a New York Times bestseller.
Not a combination that happens often I wouldn’t think.

This book is actually a series of five stories, unrelated except for their theme: Children of Africa.

Of the five, I found four to be incredible stories. One I didn’t much like but maybe because I don’t know the context well enough.

In the other four, quite simple tales are told of children living in the harsh reality of Kenya, Benin, Ethiopia, and Rwanda. Simple but harrowing and distressing and saddening. These children are facing things adults should never face and the images of the little bodies running and begging and weeping will stay with me for ages. From the unlce trying to sell his nice and nephew into slavery, to the Rwandan girl seeing the horror of the genocide upclose, each story tells of an experience much too common in Africa.

Other comments written about this book that I have read talk about how uplifting it is, about how it shows the resilience of children. I didn’t see that really. I felt so sad that we as a continent and we as a species create situations in which children are sold as slaves, watch their parents murder and be murdered, and face persecution for things they had no say in whatsoever.

What Akpan does amazingly well, especially for a man who, I assume as a Catholic priest, has no children, is capture the voice of each of the children in his stories. Children do have a non-melodramatic way of talking about the most horrendous things, and when used as a story-telling technique, this works to keep the stories from being mawkish.

He also uses lots of local dialect and speech patterns. I have read other reviewers talking about how this detracts as it makes it hard to understand every word.
I think this is the point. You do not need to understand every single part of the whole to know what it all means, be the whole a sentence or the lives of these children. Don’t read the stories thinking you will come out with a complete picture of anything. What each story is, is a snippet from the lives of millions and millions of children of Africa.
If you want to know more, go and find out.

Very glad to have read this – and although it counts as my Nigerian book, it really is an everywhere-in-Africa book. I think all Africans should read it. And all people not African too. The essence of the stories is certainly not restricted to Africa.
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Aug 01, 2012 Lit Folio rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is a remarkable collection of stories--some long enough to be a short novel, some about what we usually find with most short stories. But all of these are rich and lively, albeit painfully beautiful, in their extraordinary breath and scope. Each are microcosms into a complex culture where life on the edge is just business as usual for these Africans. All the more to take note and open one's heart--especially to these children growing up grateful for an education; that somehow, some way they...more

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Jul 11, 2012 Margarette rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: kindle-purchases-read, oprah, own, short-stories

The author, a native of Africa and Jesuit priest, wrote this book of short stories to give a voice to the children of Africa and let the world know the atrocities they must endure, and often don't survive. The title is what children are told to say when angry mobs threaten to kill them for being of a different religion or tribe. The differences are frequently within families, leading brothers to murder brothers and husbands to kill wives. The relentless poverty is also a threat. People sniff glu...more

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Apr 28, 2012 Faith rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-fiction

Uwem Akpan is a man acquainted with grief. He is a Jesuit priest from Nigeria, and these stories, all beautifully written from the point of view of children, are intended to help people see that "the situation of Africa is very urgent."

That is putting it mildly. It took me months to finish this book; for long stretches of time I became reluctant to pick it up again. The violence in the stories is as or more brutal than any I've read. But it is very far from the gratuitous pap that we have fed to...more

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Mar 15, 2012 Judy rated it 4 of 5 stars

Here I go again. Another book I want to turn away from but just can't. I bought the book in a hospital bookstore, because it looked interesting and because it had several stories in it so it would be a good "waiting room" book.

I managed to finish the first story, An Exmas feast, before I was called in for my medical appointment. This story literally turned my stomach. By the time I was called in to my appointment I was so relieved that cancer was my biggest problem. I should recommend this book...more

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Jan 19, 2012 LS rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Although this edition only contains three (viz Say You're One of Them, An Ex-Mas Feast, and My Parents' Bedroom) of the five stories from the book of the same title, it is enough to give those who are faint of heart the general gist of Akpan's subject matter and style. "Say You're One of Them" is chillingly intense. It's basically one of those living nightmare scenarios that makes me realize two things
1. I'm glad I don't live there.
and
2. I don't really have any problems. I have minor difficulti...more

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Nov 30, 2011 David rated it 4 of 5 stars

Despite the Oprah Book Club 2009 sticker, I was recommended to read this book. The five stories are all told from the point of view of children in different parts of Africa. Readrer beware - all of these stories deal with child-sex trade, the Rwanda massacre and the exploitation of resources that affect peoples ways of living. The author is a Jesuit priest who has a wonderful way with words while writing about such provocative subjects. He does not pick any religion as being better than the othe...more

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Jul 07, 2011 Kelley rated it 3 of 5 stars

A really powerful collection of short stories about contemporary horrors in Africa seen from the perspective of children. The first story: An Ex-mas feast was about street children and the older sibling’s choice to become a full-time prostitute. The second story Fatting for Gabon was the most heart-wrenching for me as it was about two children and their uncle’s choice (then reversal) to sell them into slavery. The third What Language is That was about cultural differences a young girl’s choice t...more

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Apr 06, 2011 Allison rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favourites, fiction

I usually read literary short stories with an attitude of detached admiration - of the narrative technique, of the shaping of the story arc, that kind of thing. Very rarely do I feel the kind of tension I did reading these -- I think it's the closest I've come to a genuine experience of Aristotle's catharsis involving pity and fear. In 'Fattening for Gabon' I was riveted, anticipating not just the actual taking of the children, but the realization that the adoptive godparents of whom they were s...more

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Apr 06, 2011 Zakiya rated it 3 of 5 stars

Okay, I was really excited about this book. I started reading this book, but about half way through it I had to put it down for a while. I love his writing style. This book is filled with beautiful prose, and vivid descriptions. It is very well-written. The only thing that is making this book difficult for me to read is the heavy use of dialect and foreign language. On one hand, it is necessary, as the short stories in this book take place in various countries of Africa; each with it's own uniqu...more

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Great African Reads: January: Short Story \| "Say You're One of Them"	28	52	Jan 28, 2013 08:50am
Goodreads Librari...: ISBN 9780316086363	2	18	Oct 13, 2012 08:43pm

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About Uwem Akpan

Uwem Akpan was born in Ikot Akpan Eda in southern Nigeria. After studying philosophy and English at Creighton and Gonzaga universities, he studied theology for three years at the Catholic University of Eastern Africa. 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 from his short story colle...more

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Books by Uwem Akpan

My Parent's Bedroom (A Story from Say You're One of Them)

Fattening For Gabon (A Story from Say You're One of Them)

An Ex-Mas Feast (A Story from Say You're One of Them)

What Language is That (A Story from Say You're One of Them)

Luxurious Hearses (A Story from Say You're One of Them)

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Quotes from Say You're One of Them

“I think fiction allows us to sit for a while with people we would rather not meet.” — 13 people liked it

“Gerçek bir demokraside, aptal bir şef kimsenin adına konuşamaz!” — 3 people liked it

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