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Summary
Summary
Uwem Akpan's stunning stories humanize the perils of poverty and violence so piercingly that few readers will feel they've ever encountered Africa so immediately. The eight-year-old narrator of An Ex-Mas Feast needs only enough money to buy books and pay fees in order to attend school. Even when his twelve-year-old sister takes to the streets to raise these meager funds, his dream can't be granted. Food comes first. His family lives in a street shanty in Nairobi, Kenya, but their way of both loving and taking advantage of each other strikes a universal chord. In the second of his stories published in a New Yorker special fiction issue, Akpan takes us far beyond what we thought we knew about the tribal conflict in Rwanda. The story is told by a young girl, who, with her little brother, witnesses the worst possible scenario between parents. They are asked to do the previously unimaginable in order to protect their children. This singular collection will also take the reader inside Nigeria, Benin, and Ethiopia, revealing in beautiful prose the harsh consequences for children of life in Africa. Akpan's voice is a literary miracle, rendering lives of almost unimaginable deprivation and terror into stories that are nothing short of transcendent.
Author Notes
Uwem Akpan (1971) is a Nigerian Jesuit priest and the author of Say You¿re One of Them (2008), a collection of five stories (each set in a different African country) published by Little, Brown & Company. It was picked by the Oprah Winfrey Book Club on September 17, 2009.
He was born in the southern Nigerian village of Ikot Akpan Eda; his parents were teachers. He and his three brothers grew up speaking both English and Annang. He joined the Jesuit order at 19 in 1990 and became a priest in 2003; he later earned an M.F.A. degree in creative writing at the University of Michigan. He has also studied theology at Creighton University.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (7)
Publisher's Weekly Review
This brilliant collection of short stories by Nigerian-born Akpan invites listeners into a world of beauty and heartbreak where young people in the throes of adolescence struggle to survive harrowing violence and tragedy. Miles and the remarkable Graham meet the prose with their own intensity and bring flourishes to the realistic, empathetic characters. Graham is a true stand-out: he inhabits each character fully, aces accents, and excels at conveying an understated melancholy. A thrilling work of art. A Little, Brown hardcover. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* With this heart-stopping collection, which includes the New Yorker piece, An Ex-Mas Feast, that marked Akpan as a breakout talent, the Nigerian-born Jesuit priest relentlessly personalizes the unstable social conditions of sub-Saharan Africa. Throughout, child narrators serve as intensifying prisms for horror, their vulnerability and slowly eroding innocence lending especially chilling dimensions to the volume's two most riveting entries: Fattening for Gabon (one of the book's three novellas), about the systematic grooming of a Benin 10-year-old and his sister for sale to a sex-slavery ring; and the collection's title story, a harrowing plunge into the mind of a mixed-race girl during the Rwandan genocide. From the slurp of machetes slashing into flesh to a toddler's oblivious stomping through blood puddling from his mother's crushed skull, Akpan tackles grisly violence head-on, but most of the stories, with the exception of the overlong, metaphor-laden Luxurious Hearses, are lifted above consciousness-raising shockers by Akpan's sure characterizations, understated details, and culturally specific dialect. Don't expect to emerge with redemption delivered on a silver platter. The stories' tattered hope comes indirectly, from the thirst for broader knowledge about Africa's postcolonial conflicts they'll engender, and from the possibility that the collection's opening map, with the featured nations labeled (as helpful as it is a glaring symbol of most Western readers' woeful ignorance), will someday prove superfluous.--Mattson, Jennifer Copyright 2008 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
DURING the Vietnam War, Mary McCarthy conceived of a plan in which she and other public intellectuals would travel to Hanoi to live under and give witness to the American bombing. One reason the plan fell apart was its obviousness. What were the witnesses going to do, McCarthy wrote later, "tell the public that bombs were falling?" Uwem Akpan's debut story collection, "Say You're One of Them," is also an attempt to give witness. Akpan, a Nigerian Jesuit priest currently assigned to a seminary in Zimbabwe, doesn't write in the confrontational, impassioned voice of the muckraker or the reformer. His even tone, the voice of someone simply relating events, seems to say that shock is the morally easy refuge of the softhearted. In Akpan's view, before Africa can be rescued, it must first be rescued from being a fashionable cause. "Say You're One of Them" is an implicit rebuke to sentimentalities like the ad campaign of celebrities doing themselves up in multi-culti kitsch and proclaiming "I Am African," an arrogant boast as blind as the blindness it means to address. The horrors that Akpan writes about here - and almost every story is a catalog of horrors - exist outside the realm of the rational or classifiable. To pretend you share them is foolishness. And yet, because Akpan is working in the humanist tradition, which aims to remove all barriers between characters and audiences, he must make the reader share those horrors. So in a story called "An Ex-mas Feast," we're put in the skin of the young boy huffing glue given him by his mother to quell his hunger while his sister works as a prostitute to provide for the family. The novella "Fattening for Gabon," one of two that alternate with three shorter stories, is told in the first person by a 10-year-old boy who, along with his 5-year-old sister, is being readied to become merchandise in a human-trafficking network. The novella derives its power, as well as its suspense, from the disparity between the narrator's childishly dim perceptions of what awaits them and the reader's adult awareness that something evil is in the works. The centerpiece is an extended scene in which the narrator and his sister are visited by their new "Mama" and "Papa," who sweep into their ramshackle dwelling bearing a feast the children can scarcely imagine. Even if Akpan's title hadn't tipped us off about the purpose of all that food, we'd have misgivings. Mama and Papa are not the only visitors. They bring with them two other children, a boy and a girl. Instead of taking the easy route with these victimized children, which would have been to invest them with false purity, Akpan writes of the way abuse and fear have deformed them. The girl had a "big mouth that later on that night would gobble up everything, irrespective of the food combination," Akpan writes. "Her little eyes were restless, taking in our poor surroundings with disgust." The boy is red-eyed and frail. "His skin had rashes," Akpan writes, "and the lotion he used had a pungent smell. He had a wide forehead and a sharp chin, which made his face look like a big cone. All evening, he hung his head as if it were too heavy for him to carry." There is something in those descriptions of the Ghost of Christmas Present revealing the two sallow children in his cloak and introducing them to Scrooge: "This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want." In the other novella, "Luxurious Hearses," a young Muslim boy fleeing murderous riots between Christians and Muslims rides on a bus full of escaping Christians. To mask his identity he must hide the stump of his right arm - because his hand, in accordance with Islamic law, has been cut off for stealing. The story is excruciating, sometimes from suspense but, unfortunately, sometimes also from sheer tedium. But even the most successful stories here raise the same question as Mary McCarthy's proposed witnessing of the American bombing of North Vietnam: What is the point? For Akpan, the point is to make real the miseries that afflict his continent. "The world is not looking," he said in an interview - and he's right. But looking alone isn't enough for art. Because much of the greatest humanist art has concerned itself with the poor or the sinned against, we have a tendency to associate it with naturalism. It can also be fanciful, as in Vittorio de Sica's 1951 film "Miracle in Milan," which ends with the poor flying off to heaven on broomsticks, or comic, as in the stories of the Indian writer R. K. Narayan. But even the most realistic humanist films and literature are rendered with a beauty of perception that lifts us beyond ourselves even as it wounds us. THOUGH he is obviously a talented writer, in these stories such transcendence eludes Uwem Akpan. Inevitability is an integral part of tragedy, but for it to overwhelm us, we mustn't see it coming. Inevitability is far different from the queasy dread of waiting for horrors we've already guessed at. That distinction is most marked in the final story in the collection, "My Parents' Bedroom." Akpan's telling, in miniature, of the Hutus' slaughter of the Tutsis in Rwanda, reduces that tragedy to something like neorealist Grand Guignol. Neither the most upsetting episodes in Philip Gourevitch's unforgettable nonfiction account, "We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families," nor the dramatized outrage that powers Terry George's superb political melodrama "Hotel Rwanda" made me feel the massacre the way Akpan's story does. Its grisliness repulsed me. For some, the impulse to repel will be seized on as proof of the importance and power of Akpan's writing. Aesthetic judgments are usually the first casualty when any writer addresses a humanitarian disaster, and it would be silly to deny that sometimes a writer's moral urgency can render aesthetic judgment beside the point. Still, though it seems self-evident, importance of subject matter does not equal quality of execution. No matter how much Akpan particularizes his characters' plights - a one-handed Muslim boy trying to hide his identity from a busload of Christians; a 10-year-old and his sister being readied for slavery or worse; a Rwandan girl watching the madness that overcame her country invade her house - they remain little more than stand-ins for the suffering millions. 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. Stories of poverty, addiction, human trafficking and ethnic cleansing: 'The world is not looking,' the author has said. Charles Taylor is a columnist for The Newark Star-Ledger and Bloomberg News.
School Library Journal Review
Adult/High School-With the intensity of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, Say You're One of Them tells of the horrors faced by young people throughout Africa. Akpan uses five short stories (though at well over 100 pages, both "Luxurious Hearses" and "Fattening for Gabon" are nearly stand-alone novels in their own right) to bring to light topics ranging from selling children in Gabon to the Muslim vs. Christian battles in Ethiopia. The characters face choices that most American high school students will never have to-whether or not to prostitute oneself to provide money for one's homeless family, whether to save oneself, even if it means sacrificing a beloved sibling in the process. The selections are peppered with a mix of English, French, and a variety of African tongues, and some teens may find themselves reading at a slower pace than usual, but the impact of the stories is well worth the effort. The collection offers a multitude of learning opportunities and would be well suited for "Authors not born in the United States" reading and writing assignments. Teens looking for a more upbeat, but still powerful, story may prefer Bryce Courtenay's The Power of One (Random, 1989).-Sarah Krygier, Solano County Library, Fairfield, CA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Guardian Review
A busload of refugees argue over who should get the one remaining seat. A young boy's sister works the streets to pay his school fees. A Christian girl is refused permission by her parents to play with her Muslim best friend. Within the growing canon of African writers, what sets the stories of Uwem Akpan apart is that they come to us direct from the eye of the continent. The work of writers such as Leila Aboulela, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Helen Oyeyemi comes out of the experience of the diaspora, but the stories in Akpan's debut collection are concerned uncompromisingly with the issues facing many people living in Africa now: debt, religiosity, poverty, the venality of rulers, the desire for a better life. Born in Nigeria and currently living in Zimbabwe, where he is a Jesuit priest, Akpan has spent all his life in Africa, except for a period of education in the US. Each of the five stories in Say You're One of Them is set in a different African country and told from the perspective of a child, each living upon a fault line caused by religious tension, secessionism or civil war. It is a world in which children are powerless and must use their courage and wits to make the most of the few choices they have. Most writers will insist they do not write about themes or places, but rather about people, and the people in Akpan's stories simply happen to live in Africa - or, more precisely, in a Kenyan slum, an Ethiopian suburb or in Rwanda in 1994. In "My Parents' Bedroom", a young girl wonders at the disappearance of her mother on successive nights. The child's eye proves to be the perfect lens through which to view a world made mad by the behaviour of adults. It turns out that Monique's Tutsi mother is hiding, along with a dozen or so others, in the ceiling of the master bedroom. Meanwhile, Monique's Hutu father joins the murderous mobs in an effort to divert them from the family home. In this most chilling of the five stories, for which Akpan was shortlisted for the Caine prize, he eschews easy answers, instead exploring the hidden undercurrents of neighbourly violence: envy, self-protection, the queer qualities of blood lust. Opening the door to the killers, Monique says: "They look victorious, like football champions. I know some of them. Our church usher, Monsieur Paschal, is humming and chanting and wears a bandanna. Mademoiselle Angeline, my teacher's daughter, is dancing to the chants, as if to reggae beats. She gives a thumbs-up to Monsieur Francois, who is the preacher at the nearby Adventist church." Akpan's stories are written in the first, third and even second person, and are of varying and sometimes unconventional length. "Luxurious Hearses" could be a novella. A busload of Christian refugees waits to depart the rioting north of Nigeria for the safety of the south. From the pompous old chief to the impudent young girls, the characters are all stereotypes - knowingly and cleverly employed. The bus represents the state. Only Jubril, born of a Christian father but raised a Muslim in the north, from where he is now forced to flee, cannot find a place to sit; nor can he take part in the deliberations that decide his fate, for fear his accent betrays him. Though a touch overwritten in parts, "Luxurious Hearses" demonstrates a wonderful ear for dialogue and a wicked wit. As the refugees watch Muslim youths setting alight Christian people and property on the bus's TV, Akpan observes: "All over the country, people had developed a tolerance for such common sights. Decades of military rule, with its many facets of terrorism directed at the populace, had hardened them. What got them was the sight of free fuel in the hands of the almajeris." It has been said that if you want to know a place, read its literature. In these starkly modern fables, reminiscent of African greats such as Ngugi wa Thiong'o and Ahmadou Kourouma, Akpan reveals Africa's pain, pity, joy and grace, and comes closer to the truth about modern Africa than the entire outpourings of the western mass media. Aminatta Forna is the author of Ancestor Stones (Bloomsbury). To order Say You're One of Them for pounds 10.99 with free UK p&p call Guardian book service on 0870 836 0875 or go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop Caption: article-akpan.1 In "My Parents' Bedroom", a young girl wonders at the disappearance of her mother on successive nights. The child's eye proves to be the perfect lens through which to view a world made mad by the behaviour of adults. It turns out that Monique's Tutsi mother is hiding, along with a dozen or so others, in the ceiling of the master bedroom. Meanwhile, Monique's Hutu father joins the murderous mobs in an effort to divert them from the family home. In this most chilling of the five stories, for which [Akpan] was shortlisted for the Caine prize, he eschews easy answers, instead exploring the hidden undercurrents of neighbourly violence: envy, self-protection, the queer qualities of blood lust. Opening the door to the killers, Monique says: "They look victorious, like football champions. I know some of them. Our church usher, Monsieur Paschal, is humming and chanting and wears a bandanna. Mademoiselle Angeline, my teacher's daughter, is dancing to the chants, as if to reggae beats. She gives a thumbs-up to Monsieur Francois, who is the preacher at the nearby Adventist church." - Aminatta Forna.
Kirkus Review
Redemption is in short supply in these five stories by a Nigerian priest about children caught in the crossfire of various African countries' upheavals. The opener of this debut collection, "An Ex-mas Feast," is one of the more upbeat entries--which isn't saying much, since its eight-year-old narrator describes sniffing shoe glue to ward off hunger in a Nairobi shanty town while his 12-year-old sister proudly moves from street prostitution to a brothel. In "Fattening for Gabon," a morbid variation on Hansel and Gretel, an uncle literally fattens up his nephew and niece to sell them into slavery. Although he genuinely loves them, his repentance comes too late and with not-unexpected tragic results. The least arresting story is the slight and familiar "What Language Is That?" Their families profess liberal, inclusive attitudes, but a Christian child and her Muslim best friend are prohibited from communicating when rioting breaks out in Addis Ababa, although the girls do find, perhaps briefly, "a new language." That miniscule glimmer of hope for humanity disappears in "Luxurious Hearses," an emotionally exhausting encapsulation of the devastation caused by religion. Baptized as an infant by his Catholic father, raised in a strict Muslim community by his mother, adolescent Jubril is targeted by extremists who happen to be his former playmates. Fleeing religious riots in northern Nigeria on a luxury bus full of Christians, he keeps his right wrist in his pocket; if they see that his hand has been amputated (for stealing, under Sharia law), they will know he is Muslim. Jubril comes close to finding acceptance among his fellow passengers, which only makes their ultimate violence against him that much more disturbing. The final story, "My Parents' Bedroom," goes beyond disturbing toward unbearable as the children of a Tutsi mother and Hutu father in Rwanda witness the unspeakable acts their decent parents are forced to commit. Haunting prose. Unrelenting horror. An almost unreadable must-read. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Already featured twice in The New Yorker, Nigerian (and Jesuit priest) Akpan here collects his stories of Africa's troubled children. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| An Ex-mas Feast | p. 3 |
| Fattening for Gabon | p. 37 |
| What Language Is That? | p. 173 |
| Luxurious Hearses | p. 187 |
| My Parents' Bedroom | p. 323 |
| Afterword | p. 355 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 357 |
