Say You're One of Them - Uwem Akpan

It's Thanksgiving time! One of the joys of visiting my parents is the chance to sit and read some books (don't worry, I didn't bring home COVID-19). Often, the selections on my mom's bookshelf are so far from my usual genre choices that I just pick one at random and dive in. This time around, I stumbled upon Say You're One of Them.

The reviews on the cover seemed exceedingly positive, saying this is a "jubilantly acclaimed" collection and describing the "compassion and art" in Akpan's stories. Even better, Uwem Akpan studied at my alma mater, the University of Michigan. So, I figured I'd give this book a go. I really had no clue that the book would be actual horror.

Akpan's debut work of fiction is a collection of five stories, each told from an African child's point of view. By using children as narrators, the book is perfectly set up for horror -- anything dreadful is massively magnified when happening to a confused child. Akpan very much takes advantage of the fact that his narrators are scared, helpless, and unable to fully understand what's going on around them. In the author's own words, his goal was to show the horrors occurring in some of these countries:

I would like to see a book about how children are faring in these endless conflicts in Africa. The world is not looking. I think fiction allows us to sit for a while with people we would rather not meet. 

Indeed, it is challenging to meet these characters. The book strongly reminded me of The Kite Runner,"where you always feel as though something horrible is about to happen. I don't enjoy reading about horrible things, so my strategy was to just plow through the book as quickly as possible. Though I was tempted to put it down basically the entire time, I was simultaneously driven by some inexplicable desire to blog about the book. This desire, I decided, meant I had to finish reading it.

Besides the horror, I personally struggled to appreciate the writing style. Given the children's point of view, the book is mostly written in short, blunt sentences. This amplified the horror feel -- there are no frills, just plain brutality -- but eventually felt a bit monotonous or dull, as though Akpan didn't leave himself enough room to maneuver within the childlike voice. I will qualify this criticism as fueled mostly by my own distaste for horror, and think that other readers may really enjoy Akpan's style.

The stories take place in Kenya, Rwanda, Nigeria, and Ethiopia. Akpan lived or traveled in these countries, enabling him to write with local feel and lingo. In particular, his familiarity with many languages and accents enabled him to give the characters distinct ways of speaking reminiscent of Mark Twain's efforts in Huckleberry Finn. This was perhaps slightly gimmicky and at odds with the horror feel, but definitely made the characters easier to pick out in occasional lengthy bouts of dialogue.

The final challenge I had with the book was a constant worry that the author was reinforcing existing stereotypes about African cultures. I realize this is exactly the opposite of the point of the book, and is perhaps an expression of my own prejudices. This feeling became most apparent in the fourth story, Luxurious Hearses, wherein Jubril, a sixteen-year-old Muslim refugee, attempts to hide his faith and keep his cool amongst Christian refugees. Akpan dives gratuitously into Jubril's fundamentalism, which reminded me strongly of how Islam is mocked by scared folks in the US -- but, I haven't lived in northern Nigeria, and don't know how Islam is practiced there. Even so, Luxurious Hearses seemed to make caricatures of Nigerian Islam, Christianity, and native pagan practice. More broadly, it felt like Akpan could have spent more time exploring hopeful and cheerful aspects of life in the stories' countries, which may have also increased the contrast between the characters' highs and lows. As a positive example of this approach, check out Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor.

Overall, unfortunately, I cannot even pick a favorite story in this collection. Given my own aversion to horror, I will also not recommend that anyone else read the book. But, if you choose to send your mind along this dark trail in the bush, be prepared for explicit physical and sexual violence and often-gratuitous descriptions of terrible occurrences.