Skip to main content

Review: Say You're One of Them

Author: Uwem Akpan

My Rating: 3.5 Stars

Genre: Fiction/Short Story

Year Published: 2008

Number of Pages: 258

Date Read: 14/07/2017

SUMMARY
Each story in this jubilantly acclaimed collection pays testament to the wisdom and resilience of children, even in the face of the most agonizing circumstances.

A family living in a makeshift shanty in urban Kenya scurries to find gifts of any kind for the impending Christmas holiday. A Rwandan girl relates her family's struggles to maintain a facade of normalcy amid unspeakable acts. A young brother and sister cope with their uncle's attempt to sell them into slavery. Aboard a bus filled with refugees—a microcosm of today's Africa—a Muslim boy summons his faith to bear a treacherous ride across Nigeria. Through the eyes of childhood friends the emotional toll of religious conflict in Ethiopia becomes viscerally clear.

Uwem Akpan's debut signals the arrival of a breathtakingly talented writer who gives a matter-of-fact reality to the most extreme circumstances in stories that are nothing short of transcendent. 

 MY THOUGHTS 
Rating anthologies can be such a taxing thing, because more often than not, I find myself torn as to whether to award the collection five stars based on the brilliance of one particular story, or awarding it less as a result of  a story not quite as enthralling as the preceding ones. So I end up rating the collection by the number of stories I enjoyed out of the lot.

 This book contains five stories set in five different African countries. My favourite stories were My Parents' Bedroom (Rwanada), Fattening for Gabon (Benin), and Luxurious Hearses (Nigeria). 
I didn't quite like the fact that in some stories, it felt like there was no flow of thought and the story's plot was moving at a slow pace, only to end so abruptly, leaving me confused and frustrated.  

 However, I did like how the author included a mixture of languages, even though I didn't understand a word of them. I commend the author for not sticking to familiar territory and branching out to write about the tragedies faced by children in different parts of this continent we think we are so familiar with. It honestly left me pitiful for those people who have had to face the harsh realities of tribal wars, religious wars, poverty, and human trafficking at such young ages. Although it's a highly depressing read, I recommend it . You can purchase it here on Amazon. 

 Thank you for reading!
P.S: Check out my Favourite Quotes page for new quotes xx



Comments

  1. Unknown16 November 2017 at 10:59

    I do agree that rating anthologies can be really taxing but(laughing), it's what you signed up for 'O Great Emissary'. Embrace your destiny.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Demilade 28 November 2017 at 17:04

    I like that the stories are all set in different African countries, very admirable. Great review sweetie! xx
    Coco Bella Blog

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

THE FULANI CREATION STORY

    Right from the moment Mr.Salami -my social studies teacher in year 8- taught us about religion and what different ethnic groups in Nigeria believe the true creation story is ;according to their norms and traditional orientation. I took a  particular interest in one story , which was The Fulani peoples' story.      I guess my reason was because it was so different from all the other stories. I was captivated by how they incorporated different elements of life ; how it was presented in  poem form ,but it isn't a poem lol. Let me spare you the detail . Here is a brief history of the Fulanis , for those who aren't too familiar with who they are and what part of Nigeria they hail from. Fulani, people of Africa numbering about 7 million and dispersed in varying, often sizable, concentrations throughout the grassland areas of West Africa from Senegal and Guinea to Nigeria , Cameroon, and Chad. Their Fulfulde language is closely relate...
11 comments
Read more

REVIEW: A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS

Author : Khaled Hosseini Genre : Novel My Rating : 4.5 | 5 Stars Number of Pages : 402 Pages Year of Publication : 2007 SUMMARY Mariam is only fifteen when she is sent to Kabul to marry Rasheed. Nearly two decades later, a friendship grows between Mariam and a local teenager, Laila, as strong as the ties between mother and daughter. When the Taliban take over, life becomes a desperate struggle against starvation, brutality and fear. Yet love can move people to act in unexpected ways, and lead them to overcome the most daunting obstacles with startling heroism. "Like a compass needle that points north, a man's accusing finger alawys finds a woman. Always. You remember that, Mariam."-Nana "... One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs And the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls ..."- Saib-e-Tabrizi , 17th Century MY VERDICT   I loved how I expected the author to be female, bu t turned out to be male. I love the Aut...
2 comments
Read more

Review: The Enemy Within

Author : Steve Jacobs My Rating : 4.5 Stars Genre : Fiction/Literature Year of Publication : 1995 Date Read :16/08/2017 Number of Pages :185 ISBN : 9780435909987 SUMMARY A black man, brutalised by apartheid, murders his wife. His fate is in the hands of a young Jewish lawyer, Jeremy Spielman. As Jeremy prepares to defend his client, he discovers uncomfortable facts about his own life: the racism of his girlfriend, the injustice of the legal system and his own weakness in the face of his country's enemies . MY THOUGHTS The Enemy Within   is one of numerous books, which are part of the African Writers Series (AWS). If you don't know what the African Writers Series is, click  here  to educate yourself :) This book was really quick and easy to read, yet it carried so much depth in it's pages. This is a quality that all the AWS books I've read all possess and for this reason, I hope to read all the books in the series- all 200+ of them. I caught a gli...
2 comments
Read more