Review: Say You’re One of Them

Say You’re One of Them is a book of five short stories written by Uwem Akpan.   All of the stories are set in Africa and are told from a child’s perspective.  They deal with such topics as slavery, religious conflict, genocide and poverty.  These are stories of love and sacrifice.  They are stories of compassion and confusion.  They make you wonder how children can grow up and survive under such circumstances.  Some of the stories will leave you feeling numb.

The story that had the biggest impact on me was My Parent’s Bedroom.  It’s the story of Monique, a young girl living in Rwanda with her Tutsi mother and her Hutu father.  There is conflict between the two tribes, which Monique and her brother Jean don’t understand.  It all comes to a horrifying ending for their family when their mother makes the ultimate sacrifice.  I can’t describe the horror I felt at the end of this story.

I enjoyed Say You’re One of Them and think it’s a significant book, but I found some of the dialogue very difficult to read.  I think it would have been even harder if I didn’t know some French.  There were times when I had to read sentences several times to extract their meaning.  Here’s an example of dialogue, chosen at random:

“My mama no be like dat,” Jubril argued. “I say I dey come.  I go join una now now.  Ah ah, no vex now.  Come, pollow me go fark dis cows, and I go join.”

This book isn’t a fast read, but I think it’s an important one.  The title of the book comes from the fact that children in Africa sometimes have to deny their identity and say they’re one of “them” (another tribe or religion) in order to survive.  You will be a different person after you’ve read this book.

Uwem Akpan was born in Nigeria and educated in the US.  He currently teaches at a seminary in Zimbabwe.  Say You’re One of Them won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book, African Region, and has been nominated for several other awards.

Review copy provided by Hachette Books.