Say You're One of Them

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 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.
 * "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.
 * "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.
 * "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.

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."

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.'"

Awards and honours

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