I have enjoyed reading this book but at times it is quite hard to understand. A different language is used frequently and there is no explanation as to what the words translate to in english, so sometimes it is hard to follow the stories.

I was attracted to this book after hearing an interview on NPR with the author. The interviewer mentioned that it was written in the voice of the children, as children. I was not disappointed. Here we see a child's eye view of some of the horrific political situations in Africa without the politics. It is written from the perspective of those who remain innocent in a world that is not innocent, even when they are swept up in the horrors themselves and become part of it.

This is a very difficult book to read, not because of its format but because of its content. It was eye opening for me and I thought I was aware of the poverty and hardship that exists in Africa. The book looks at events in the poorest parts of Africa through the eyes of children and it is painful. Read at your own risk, the risk of realizing how very fortunate you are to live where you do and the feeling that maybe you could be doing something to help.

Hachette Book Group USA has put out another book that I fell in love with. (The first set of books from Hachette that caught my attention were those by Stephenie Meyer. I was thrilled to learn that Twilight is being made into a movie set to open on December 12, 2008!) This latest book, Say You're One of Them by Uwem Akpan, was a more difficult read, though a call to action that is timely and necessary. The book is a collection of 5 short stories by Akpan, a Jesuit priest originally from Nigeria who is now living and teaching in Harare, Zimbabwe.

Akpan's is certainly not the first set of stories to chronicle the trouble life of people across Africa. What is unique about the collection is that it is told entirely from the perspective of children. Because of their resiliency, children are able to see the light and dark, simultaneously, in many situations where adults see only one aspect or the other. Children are on a quest for joy, for resolution, and most certainly for peace. As Frank McCourt said in the trilogy of books about his own life, children keep moving forward because it's the only thing they know how to do. Akpan's characters embrace that philosophy and take us along with them for the journey.

To be sure, the circumstances are horrifying - tribal wars, destruction, rape, poverty, starvation. I sometimes had to put the book down because each page is so densely packed with raw emotion and brutally honest storytelling. There is no sugar-coating here. What kept me coming back and reading late into the night was Akpan's intensely visual story telling that has us bear witness to what's happening in countries all across Africa. We are unable to turn away as we make our way through the book and we feel compelled, even obligated, to do something, to say something, to change something. Through literature, he found his voice while also giving a voice to those who are unable to speak for themselves.

Say You're One of Them was recently reviewed in USA Today. And today, there is a front page article in USA Today on Americans who are finding purpose in Africa.

The cover photo of Uwem Akpan's brilliant collection of stories is of an African girl running down a dirt road, ostensibly from any number of the evils African children confront within the book's covers. Her dress looks remarkably like what an orphaned girl was wearing in a rural Kenyan village I visited several months ago, so perhaps the characters in these exceptional portraits are all the more real to me as a result. Whatever the reason, through his child's view narration of poverty, trafficking, genocide, and other horrors of modern Africa, the characters in these stories haunt me for days, especially the two Nigerian children in "Fattening for Gabon."

All of these stories have political and moral implications, but Akpan leaves those to the reader, focusing instead on the interaction of the characters with their circumstances. Read this book to understand, in some small part, the resilience of people throughout the African continent in the face of unspeakable tragedy and personal suffering. These are, quite simply, the most extraordinary stories I have ever read.

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.

Dave Donelson, author of Heart of Diamonds: A Novel of Scandal, Love and Death in the Congo

This book consists of short stories that describe realistic scenarios of African lives the average American won't see watching network news. Akpan manages to creatively detail interpersonal dynamics with simple adjectives and each story ends so abruptly,leaving you imagining how the next passage would begin. Each story is narrated through the simple, honest eyes of a child and Akpan achieves this so brilliantly by removing judgement. Definite good read.

Reviewed by Kam Aures for RebeccasReads (6/08)

"Say You're One of Them" is a collection of short stories written by Uwem Akpan, a Jesuit priest born in Nigeria. His inspiration to write comes from "the people who sit around my village church to share palm wine after Sunday mass, by the Bible, and by the humor and endurance of the poor." All proceeds from this book will be going to his religious order, the Jesuits.

Each of the five stories in the book envisions what life is like for children in different African nations. For example, in the first short story in the book, "An Ex-Mas Feast", the tale is told of an eight-year-old Kenyan boy named Jigana, and the lengths his family must go to in order to survive. When there is no food, Jigana's mother has the children sniff glue as this act suppresses the children's appetites until their next meal. Most of the money that the family has is earned by his twelve-year old sister Maisha who works the streets as a prostitute. It is heartbreaking to see what these children endure in order to keep their family's heads above water.

Some of the language used throughout the book is a little difficult to understand and there were many instances in which I had to reread passages in order to understand what was being said. Here is an example of Akpan's writing style taken from the first story: "We shall pay school fees next year. No more randa-meandering around. No more chomaring your brain with glue, boy. You are going back to school! Did the rain beat you and Baby?" (p.8) There are quite a few native non-English words and sentences peppered throughout the novel that you can usually decipher based on the context but, in my opinion, somewhat hinder the natural flow of the book.

Although the book is a work of fiction, the stories really make you think and feel for the children of these African countries, as some of these stories are all too close to home for the impoverished among them. The writing is powerful and will make you think about things in a whole new way. Akpan is a truly talented writer, and I think that his work is a very important one and will be instrumental in opening the eyes of the world to the plight of these people.

This group of short stories by Nigerian-born Jesuit priest, Uwem Akpan, is absolutely stunning. I mean that in two distinct ways.

First, the stories are wonderfully constructed with characters that come alive on the page. The descriptions of family/village/street life in Nigeria, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Benin and Kenya are often both detailed and horrific. Which leads to the second way in which the stories are stunning - the difficulties experienced by the young protagonists in these stories continued to stun me long after I put the book down.

In "An Ex-Mas Feast," Uwem Akpan takes us to the seedy street world of Nairobi, Kenya, where a family - parents and children, live off of the earnings of the twelve-year-old daughter who sells herself to rich men in fancy cars. Some of the earnings are supposed to help her brother go to school. He is bright, sensitive and knows what is going on - and is not happy about it.

The children in "Fattening for Gabon" are being prepared for sale into slavery by their uncle. In "What Language Is That?" two little Ethiopian girls are best friends until their parents suddenly say they cannot speak to each other ever again because one is Muslim and the other is Christian. In "Luxurious Hearses" a Nigerian boy from the north is trying to escape to relatives in the south - on a bus filled with the same religious animosity that he hope to escape. The final story, "My Parent's Bedroom" describes the violence between the Rwandan Hutus and Tutsis as seen through the eyes of a young girl who has mixed parentage.

These stories all are full of hatred and humanity, love and unspeakable evil. They bring some understanding to news from African nations and make it feel personal.

Uwem Akpan does use quite a bit of native dialect in the speech of the characters. He also sprinkles it with many non-English words. A brief glossary at the end of the book would have been useful. I could understand the terms in context, but I'm afraid that subtle and possibly not-so-subtle nuances were lost.

Armchair Interviews says: Up close and personal with people in these countries.

Uwem Akpan has an unusually privileged perspective: having grown up in Nigeria and traveled around Africa, he knows the depths of that continent's poverty. But Akpan's post-secondary education has been especially privileged, since he has earned various degrees at several US universities.

This perspective allows Akpan to convey an unknown reality to us readers in a powerful, authentic voice that reaches well beyond the surface of our cozy lives. Akpan is first and last a man of hope, a hope fueled solely by his mature and profound faith. His stories have the same Catholic 'punch' as those of Flannery O'Connor, because he has the same honest, open-eyed faith she relied upon. His artistry of hope amidst misery is a great gift to literature, and to each of his readers.