Say You're One of Them

Say You're One of Them

First US edition
Author	Uwem Akpan
Language	English
Genre	Short Stories
Publisher	Abacus (UK) Little, Brown (US)
Publication date	2008
Publication place	Nigeria
Media type	Print (paperback)
Pages	294
ISBN	9780349120638

Say You're One of Them (2008) is the debut book by Nigerian writer Uwem Akpan. First published in English in the United Kingdom and United States, it is a collection of five stories or novellas, each featuring children at risk and set in a different African country.

In 2009 this book won the 2009 Commonwealth Writers Prize (Africa region), the PEN/Beyond Margins Award (now the PEN Open Book Award), and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award (Fiction). It was also nominated for other major awards and was a finalist for several. It was translated into twelve languages and listed as a No. 1 bestseller by The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal .

Stories

• "An Ex-Mas Feast" : is told from the viewpoint of a young boy living in a poor family in a Nairobi slum. His mother gives him glue to sniff to quell his hunger. His 12-year-old sister works as a prostitute to support the family and contemplates deserting her desperate, failing relatives. ^[1]
• "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 features 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. The payment, a new motorbike, has already been delivered, and the deal cannot be cancelled. ^[2]
• "My Parents' Bedroom": set in 1994 Rwanda and written in the first person. A young girl tells of her Tutsi mother and some neighbours hiding in the ceiling of her parents' room. Outside, her Hutu father participates with other Hutu adults, neighbours and strangers alike, in brutal killing in an effort to protect his own family.
• "Luxurious Hearses": this novella features a Muslim boy in Nigeria, disguised as a Christian, attempting to make his way on a bus filled with Christians from the North to the South of the country in the midst of mass religious riots by Muslims against Christians. ^{[2] [3]}
• "What Language is That?": Two young girls in Ethiopia, one Christian, one Muslim, are forced to break their friendship as religious tensions explode in their community. ^[4]

Reception

The book received praise from major media and several prestigious awards. It was also longlisted or a finalist for other awards. In the September/October 2008 issue of Bookmarks , the book was rated four out of five. The magazine's critical summary reads: "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". ^[5]

Maureen Corrigan of NPR said, "Akpan's brilliance is to present that brutal subject [partisan hatred] through the bewildered, resolutely chipper voice of children; he never succumbs to the temptation of making his narrators endearing or overly innocent. They've seen too much to pretend purity." ^[1]

While Charles Taylor of The New York Times noted that Akpan was writing beyond witness and did not want sentimentality, the critic had reservations about the author's trying to convey so much through single characters. He concluded about some of the characters,

"They are not just marked by their suffering; they are nothing more than their suffering, and therefore on some basic level they are faceless. Humanist empathy devoid of the distinctly human is finally not art but merely grim reportage." ^[3]

Awards and honours

• 2008 Guardian First Book Award longlist
• 2008 Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist (Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction)
• 2009 Commonwealth Writers' Prize (Best First Book, Africa)
• 2009 Dayton Literary Peace Prize Runner-Up
• 2009 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award (Fiction)
• 2009 PEN/Beyond Margins Award (since 2010 known as PEN Open Book Award)

References

1. Corrigan, Maureen (19 June 2008). "Unflinching Evil in 'Say You're One of Them'". Fresh Air. NPR. Archived from the original on 2023-11-29. Retrieved 1 March 2024.
2. Forna, Aminatta (5 July 2008). "Fault lines". The Guardian . Archived from the original on 2015-07-21. Retrieved 1 March 2024.
3. Taylor, Charles (27 July 2008). "Can I Get a Witness?". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 2018-03-20. Retrieved 1 March 2024.
4. Egelman, Sarah Rachel (January 23, 2011). "Say You're One of Them". ReadingGroupGuides.com. Archived from the original on 2019-08-07. Retrieved Aug 7, 2019– via www.readinggroupguides.com.
5. "Say You're One of Them By Uwem Akpan". Bookmarks. Archived from the original on 7 Sep 2015. Retrieved 14 January 2023.