Say Youre 1 of Them (Oprah's Book Club)

"Haunting prose.... A must-read." -- Kirkus Reviews

"All five of these stories are electrifying." -- NPR's "Fresh Air" "Maureen Corrigan"

"[A] startling debut collection... Akpan is not striving for surreal effects. He is summoning miseries that are real.... He fuses a knowledge of African poverty and strife with a conspicuously literary approach to storytelling filtering tales of horror through the wide eyes of the young."--New York Times "Janet Maslin "

"Uwem Akpan's searing "Say You're One of Them" captures a ravaged Africa through the dry-eyed gaze of children trying to maintain a sense of normalcy amid chaos."--Vogue "Megan O'Grady "

""Say You're One of Them" is a book that belongs on every shelf."--New York Daily News "Sherryl Connelly "

"Haunting prose.... A must-read."--Kirkus Reviews

"Nigerian-born Jesuit priest Akpan transports the reader into gritty scenes of chaos and fear in his rich debut collection... Akpan's prose is beautiful and his stories are insightful and revealing, made even more harrowing because all the horror-and there is much-is seen through the eyes of children."--Publishers Weekly

"Uwem Akpan, a Nigerian Jesuit priest, has said he was inspired to write by the 'humor and endurance of the poor, ' and his debut story collection...about the gritty lives of African children--speaks to the fearsome, illuminating truth of that impulse."--Elle "Lisa Shea "

"This fierce story collection from a Nigerian-born Jesuit priest brings home Africa's most haunting tragedies in tales that take you from the streets of Nairobi to the Hutu-Tutsi genocide."--Minneapolis Star Tribune "Margo Hammond & Ellen Heltzel "

"All five of these stories are electrifying."--NPR's "Fresh Air" "Maureen Corrigan "

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.