Say You're One of Them

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Say You're One of Them
Say You're One of Them.jpg
First US edition
Author Uwem Akpan
CountryNigeria
LanguageEnglish
GenreShort Stories
Publisher Abacus (UK)
Little, Brown (US)
Publication date
2008
Media typePrint (paperback)
Pages294
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.

Contents

In 2009 this book won the 2009 Commonwealth Writers Prize (Africa region), the 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

Reception

The book received praise from major media and several prestigious awards. It was also longlisted or a finalist for other awards.

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." [5]

While Charles Taylor of the 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

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References

  1. Maureen Corrigan, "Unflinching Evil in 'Say You're One of Them'", NPR Books, 19 June 2008.
  2. 1 2 Forna, Aminatta (5 July 2008). "Fault lines". The Guardian . Retrieved 1 March 2024.
  3. 1 2 {{cite web|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/27/books/review/Taylor-t.html?pagewanted=all last=Taylor |first=Charles |title= Can I Get a Witness? |work= The New York Times |date= 27 July 2008|access-date= 1 March 2024
  4. "Say You're One of Them | ReadingGroupGuides.com" . Retrieved Aug 7, 2019 via www.readinggroupguides.com.
  5. Corrigan, Maureen (19 June 2008). "Unflinching Evil in 'Say You're One of Them'". Fresh Air. NPR. Retrieved 1 March 2024.