cheydaytaysaway's review against another edition
4.0
The idea of giving this collection a star rating seems bizarre and inappropriate, as most everything feels after reading this book. I am a bit struck dumb, conflicted, unsure what to do, which I think is what art is supposed to do. Enjoyment has nothing to do with this book, but that isn't to say it isn't worth undertaking, because somehow still, as emotionally numbed as I feel I am still glad to have read it. Or if not glad, something akin to it.
Of all the stories in this collection, I think I was most impressed upon by "Luxurious Hearses." It seems very much to succeed in creating (as the inside flap describes) a "microcosm" of Africa that speeds along almost like a stage play. The drama unfolds so naturally and the flashbacks are woven in with so much grace, it feels like getting a truer glimpse into the complicated and heartbreaking lives of refugees. This book is not easy, by any means, but it is important. So, so important. It is difficult to get used to the horror, and really, you never do; it almost feels over the top, like shock value in the first story. When it begins to sink in that this isn't the case at all, it becomes incredibly painful, and bleak. But that's what makes it such a good read; there is real heart, real confusion, real childlike wonder at the core of every story. These stories are so hard to swallow, but worth it.
Of all the stories in this collection, I think I was most impressed upon by "Luxurious Hearses." It seems very much to succeed in creating (as the inside flap describes) a "microcosm" of Africa that speeds along almost like a stage play. The drama unfolds so naturally and the flashbacks are woven in with so much grace, it feels like getting a truer glimpse into the complicated and heartbreaking lives of refugees. This book is not easy, by any means, but it is important. So, so important. It is difficult to get used to the horror, and really, you never do; it almost feels over the top, like shock value in the first story. When it begins to sink in that this isn't the case at all, it becomes incredibly painful, and bleak. But that's what makes it such a good read; there is real heart, real confusion, real childlike wonder at the core of every story. These stories are so hard to swallow, but worth it.
pennymine's review against another edition
3.0
Some of the stories move very slowly and others more quickly. Also, the stories are different lengths. Some are a more traditional length for a short story and others are more like a novella.
Much of the dialog in the book is written phonetically with an African accent appropriate to the country. I found this a little hard to follow at times and I'm not sure that it added much to the book.
Overall, a good read. I was touched by the stories of courage of African children caught in the middle of impossible situations. The author managed to preserve the innocence of the children and highlight the tragic circumstances they found themselves in.
Much of the dialog in the book is written phonetically with an African accent appropriate to the country. I found this a little hard to follow at times and I'm not sure that it added much to the book.
Overall, a good read. I was touched by the stories of courage of African children caught in the middle of impossible situations. The author managed to preserve the innocence of the children and highlight the tragic circumstances they found themselves in.
megshulse's review against another edition
3.0
I will confess, I mostly skimmed the longer entries of this book. However the last three stories and their religious themes really resonated considering the tragedies of Israel and Palestine conflict currently.
mskanyegenya's review against another edition
3.0
I"m conflicted about rating this book. While it makes for good reading, it is also heartbreaking. When I finished it I was really pissed at the author. Like, that's it? There is no happy ending in any of the stories (is that a spoiler?). And I remember thinking that I'm gonna give it a one star review. I would even advise my friends not to read it.
But then I calmed down.
I realize the reason I felt so strongly about it was because this is my reality as an African. These things that Akpan talks about are right here in this society that I live in. These are my issues. These people? I am one of them.
But then I calmed down.
I realize the reason I felt so strongly about it was because this is my reality as an African. These things that Akpan talks about are right here in this society that I live in. These are my issues. These people? I am one of them.
chrisb509's review against another edition
4.0
The subject matter was hard to read about, but I would have gotten more about it if the dialog (in some of the stories) weren't even more difficult to read. For me, the broken English did not add anything to the message. I spent as much, if not more, time trying to understand the sentences as I spent trying to understand the message.
That said, I found it a rewarding and thought provoking read.
That said, I found it a rewarding and thought provoking read.
imaima's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
4.25
emilyusuallyreading's review against another edition
4.0
I will review this instead of with my usual "what I liked" and "what I disliked" method, and rather by each of the short stories.
I work for a nonprofit as the Kenyan director. Although I hear stories strikingly similar to these every single day of my life and although I have come face-to-face with the survivors of these stories, still Akpan's writing left me shocked and haunted. Stories of extreme poverty and violence can come across as hopeless and daunting... and in a sense, they are. There are victims we will not be able to reach in their childhood. However, there is hope. Putting children in school educates future leaders for a brighter future. Fighting against sex trafficking, working to prevent tribal and religious genocide, standing up against rape... there are things you can do to stop these horrific issues. (At this moment, can I bring up my specific nonprofit, Christian Relief Fund?)
The starfish analogy comes to mind. A billion starfish are washed up on a beach. You want to throw them back into the sea so they won't die slowly and painfully under the hot sun. You can't save all the starfish with your own 2 hands, but you can make a difference to some of them. So my recommendation is to take this book as a challenge - 5 children are highlighted in Say You're One of Them. Could you make a difference to 5 children fighting to survive in Africa? You could.
An Ex-Mas Feast
This was my favorite of the stories, probably because it takes place in my favorite country in the world. Also because I'm very familiar with the location, tribes, and words used so that my comprehension wasn't lost in the foreign dialogue.
Jigana is a little boy living on the streets of Nairobi with his family in a kind of makeshift shanty. Because his 12-year-old elder sister couldn't afford to go to school, she turns to prostitution to both help her younger brother pay his school fees and also eventually carve her own path out of her destructive family life.
I read in the back insert that Akpan spent 3 years in Kenya, and I can tell by his knowledge of details as small as Tuskers beer! It broke my heart to read about the sniffing of glue, something that truly wrecks the minds of these street boys and is a huge problem in the cities of Kenya.
I did catch one flaw of the Luo culture (and it made me proud to catch it because it means I am a good scholar of the people I work with), and that is that there are twin toddlers in the story named Otieno and Atieno. "Otieno/Atieno" means "born at night." However, if there is a set of twins, their names should be "Odongo/Adongo," regardless of when they were born.
Overall, The Ex-Mas Feast I read most clearly, I became attached to the characters the most, and I felt like it had the truest character arc from the first page to the last.
Fattening for Gabon
This story is fascinating. Presumably set in Nigeria (due to the currency used), after their parents contract AIDS and can no longer care for their children, Kotchikpa and Yewa are sent to live with their uncle "Fofo" Kpee. The man is blinded by his own poverty and greed, so he makes an agreement to sell the children into sex slavery in exchange for a motorcycle. He must prepare them for the long journey to Gabon in the underbelly of a hot, stuffy boat - and as he teaches these children how to suffer while also filling them with fattening food so they will no longer look emaciated and hungry, Fofo Kpee begins to regret the bargain he made (a bargain that he knows cannot be renegotiated).
I enjoyed (if that can be the right word) reading about these children's confusion with each phrase they had to memorize, at how they had to sleep in a stuffy hut to prepare them for nights crammed into the bottom of a boat, and so on. As Kotchikpa began to realize what was happening, I did too and it was horrific.
And the ending broke my heart.
My biggest complaint about the story was all of the French and mother tongue used. So much of it is used in almost any dialogue that I found myself lost about what a character was trying to say. What on earth does "dey" mean?
What Language Is That?
In Ethiopia, an unnamed protagonist is a 6-year-old with a best friend named Selam. The protag (written in second person) is from a Christian family while Selam is from a Muslim family. Religious riots break out between the two faiths and the children are not allowed to be friends anymore except for making hand gestures from across each other's balconies.
I liked this story, although I wish there was more to it. Less of a novella than any of the others, this had the length of a single chapter and it was so simple that I could barely get absorbed before it all passed.
An interesting note about this story is that the family is not poor. They are, however, affected by violence just like any other family in the area.
Luxurious Hearses
In Nigeria, Jubril is a Muslim boy pretending to be a Christian as he flees to his native people in the Christian south of the country to avoid being killed in the religious violence. The entire story takes place during an agonizing bus ride in which Jubril attempts to hide his right hand, as it was cut off to follow the Sharia law after Jubril sold a goat. If anyone sees his right hand, everything is lost for him.
This was my least favorite of the stories. I understand that Akpan was trying to show African hierarchies and ethnicities that are so diverse within such a small space of land, but for an American who doesn't know the Nigerian culture, I was left lost by their language and what they were trying to say. The words abbreviated to show accents with other languages interspersed made for very confusing dialogue. Here is an example:
"Den leave de Luxurious Bus," Tega said from her seat. "Who you be? Abasha man? Babangida boy!"
"As our people say, before the discovery of peanuts, people were not eating pebbles... Keep your Christianity to yourself!"
"No confuse us wid proverb," Tega continued. "Maybe you be pagan... wizard!" A few people laughed at her comments.
"Pagan, eh?" the chief said. "How dare you call my traditional religion paganism!"
"But, Chief, you dey pray poritics wid dis ting," Ijeoma said. "Just reave de seat."
"If you no be Christian, wetin else remain?" Tega said.
This story was also very slow-paced. Once the story finally hit a critical point, it was over within a page.
My Parents' Bedroom
In Rwanda, this story takes place in the center of the Tutsi/Hutu conflict. Little Shenge is a mixture of both tribes. Her father is Hutu and her mother is Tutsi. Her father hides Tutsi people in the attic of their crumbling home in an attempt to save them from the genocide. Daily, Hutu comrades enter the home looking for Shenge's maman.
Akpan writes a horror novella here. Truly, although it's based off of very true events, it unfolds like horror and I was left trembling and feeling ill.
The story was difficult to get into due to the same issue with writing in other languages, but once I caught onto what was happening, my eyes were glued to the page and I stared at the blank sheet of paper when it was all over. Heart-wrenching, horrific tale.
I work for a nonprofit as the Kenyan director. Although I hear stories strikingly similar to these every single day of my life and although I have come face-to-face with the survivors of these stories, still Akpan's writing left me shocked and haunted. Stories of extreme poverty and violence can come across as hopeless and daunting... and in a sense, they are. There are victims we will not be able to reach in their childhood. However, there is hope. Putting children in school educates future leaders for a brighter future. Fighting against sex trafficking, working to prevent tribal and religious genocide, standing up against rape... there are things you can do to stop these horrific issues. (At this moment, can I bring up my specific nonprofit, Christian Relief Fund?)
The starfish analogy comes to mind. A billion starfish are washed up on a beach. You want to throw them back into the sea so they won't die slowly and painfully under the hot sun. You can't save all the starfish with your own 2 hands, but you can make a difference to some of them. So my recommendation is to take this book as a challenge - 5 children are highlighted in Say You're One of Them. Could you make a difference to 5 children fighting to survive in Africa? You could.
An Ex-Mas Feast
This was my favorite of the stories, probably because it takes place in my favorite country in the world. Also because I'm very familiar with the location, tribes, and words used so that my comprehension wasn't lost in the foreign dialogue.
Jigana is a little boy living on the streets of Nairobi with his family in a kind of makeshift shanty. Because his 12-year-old elder sister couldn't afford to go to school, she turns to prostitution to both help her younger brother pay his school fees and also eventually carve her own path out of her destructive family life.
I read in the back insert that Akpan spent 3 years in Kenya, and I can tell by his knowledge of details as small as Tuskers beer! It broke my heart to read about the sniffing of glue, something that truly wrecks the minds of these street boys and is a huge problem in the cities of Kenya.
I did catch one flaw of the Luo culture (and it made me proud to catch it because it means I am a good scholar of the people I work with), and that is that there are twin toddlers in the story named Otieno and Atieno. "Otieno/Atieno" means "born at night." However, if there is a set of twins, their names should be "Odongo/Adongo," regardless of when they were born.
Overall, The Ex-Mas Feast I read most clearly, I became attached to the characters the most, and I felt like it had the truest character arc from the first page to the last.
Fattening for Gabon
This story is fascinating. Presumably set in Nigeria (due to the currency used), after their parents contract AIDS and can no longer care for their children, Kotchikpa and Yewa are sent to live with their uncle "Fofo" Kpee. The man is blinded by his own poverty and greed, so he makes an agreement to sell the children into sex slavery in exchange for a motorcycle. He must prepare them for the long journey to Gabon in the underbelly of a hot, stuffy boat - and as he teaches these children how to suffer while also filling them with fattening food so they will no longer look emaciated and hungry, Fofo Kpee begins to regret the bargain he made (a bargain that he knows cannot be renegotiated).
I enjoyed (if that can be the right word) reading about these children's confusion with each phrase they had to memorize, at how they had to sleep in a stuffy hut to prepare them for nights crammed into the bottom of a boat, and so on. As Kotchikpa began to realize what was happening, I did too and it was horrific.
And the ending broke my heart.
My biggest complaint about the story was all of the French and mother tongue used. So much of it is used in almost any dialogue that I found myself lost about what a character was trying to say. What on earth does "dey" mean?
What Language Is That?
In Ethiopia, an unnamed protagonist is a 6-year-old with a best friend named Selam. The protag (written in second person) is from a Christian family while Selam is from a Muslim family. Religious riots break out between the two faiths and the children are not allowed to be friends anymore except for making hand gestures from across each other's balconies.
I liked this story, although I wish there was more to it. Less of a novella than any of the others, this had the length of a single chapter and it was so simple that I could barely get absorbed before it all passed.
An interesting note about this story is that the family is not poor. They are, however, affected by violence just like any other family in the area.
Luxurious Hearses
In Nigeria, Jubril is a Muslim boy pretending to be a Christian as he flees to his native people in the Christian south of the country to avoid being killed in the religious violence. The entire story takes place during an agonizing bus ride in which Jubril attempts to hide his right hand, as it was cut off to follow the Sharia law after Jubril sold a goat. If anyone sees his right hand, everything is lost for him.
This was my least favorite of the stories. I understand that Akpan was trying to show African hierarchies and ethnicities that are so diverse within such a small space of land, but for an American who doesn't know the Nigerian culture, I was left lost by their language and what they were trying to say. The words abbreviated to show accents with other languages interspersed made for very confusing dialogue. Here is an example:
"Den leave de Luxurious Bus," Tega said from her seat. "Who you be? Abasha man? Babangida boy!"
"As our people say, before the discovery of peanuts, people were not eating pebbles... Keep your Christianity to yourself!"
"No confuse us wid proverb," Tega continued. "Maybe you be pagan... wizard!" A few people laughed at her comments.
"Pagan, eh?" the chief said. "How dare you call my traditional religion paganism!"
"But, Chief, you dey pray poritics wid dis ting," Ijeoma said. "Just reave de seat."
"If you no be Christian, wetin else remain?" Tega said.
This story was also very slow-paced. Once the story finally hit a critical point, it was over within a page.
My Parents' Bedroom
In Rwanda, this story takes place in the center of the Tutsi/Hutu conflict. Little Shenge is a mixture of both tribes. Her father is Hutu and her mother is Tutsi. Her father hides Tutsi people in the attic of their crumbling home in an attempt to save them from the genocide. Daily, Hutu comrades enter the home looking for Shenge's maman.
Akpan writes a horror novella here. Truly, although it's based off of very true events, it unfolds like horror and I was left trembling and feeling ill.
The story was difficult to get into due to the same issue with writing in other languages, but once I caught onto what was happening, my eyes were glued to the page and I stared at the blank sheet of paper when it was all over. Heart-wrenching, horrific tale.
svnfl0wery's review against another edition
It's very boring? The topics in here are really important to know more about, but the writing makes you feel detached, and you don't really care for these stories and characters in them. It's a shame! This would be much better if it wasn't fiction, I think!