Say You're One of Them by Uwem Akpan

Say You're One of Them by Uwem Akpan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Why I read it: One of the January selections for the Great African Reads Group, and because it included several countries I hadn't yet covered in my Around the World reading - Niger, Gabon, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Ethiopia, and Benin

This book brought me to tears, multiple times. I actually had to put a little bit of distance in between finishing it and reviewing it. The author, Uwem Akpan, wrote these stories to draw attention to the children of Africa and the struggles they face. It is tempting to dismiss it as merely fiction, to reassure myself that people surely do not live this way, but I know too much of the reality to be able to do so. The stories themselves are fiction of course, but pull from very real events.

I wouldn't recommend it to everyone. Be prepared; these are heavy.

Story by story, may contain spoilers:

The Ex-Mas Feast - This takes place in a Nairobi shantytown, where a family tries to plan for holidays when they don't have money for food. Chemicals for sniffing are given as gifts instead. My younger sister went to Nairobi to visit with missionary friends of the family a few years back, and I was reminded of her photos.


Fattening for Gabon - A story of two children, who already lost their parents to AIDS (they don't seem to understand this), being prepared to be sold into slavery by their uncle. The way it is told, heavy on dialect and food description, almost serves to mask the horror. But then I would stop to realize what was going on, ugh. I kept thinking maybe they are going to be adopted! But no. This story is very long, more of a novella.

What Language is That? - Highlighting the turmoil created in communities by religious groups encouraging violence. Could you explain to a 6 year old why she can no longer see her best friend?

Luxurious Hearses - Another very long story, more of a novella, about people fleeing a violent city on a bus. The main character is trying to hide that he is Muslim because of tensions. I liked how everyone on the bus had to have an opinion about everything, it gave a good sense of the cultures involved and what was valued. It gets more and more violent as the story progresses, and yet I was still hoping for a better end!

My Parents' Bedroom - This is the story I wish I hadn't read. Horribly violent, horrifying, I just can't even recall it enough to summarize it. Ethnic cleansing is something I will never understand.

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This Child Will Be Great by Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

This Child Will Be Great: Memoir of a Remarkable Life by Africa's First Woman President by Ellen Johnson Sirleaf
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I saw President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf speak at the institution where I work a few years ago, and found her story to be incredibly inspiring. I was hoping the book would be more of the same. While inspiration can be found here, it is often bogged down with tedious economic detail (Sirleaf was in banking and economics) and acronyms like you would not believe.

I definitely learned some things, and I think that kept it at 3 stars for me. I don't think I was aware of anything going on in Liberia, ever. Blame my lack of knowledge of the world, blame the lack of American media's focus, but a lot happened that I knew nothing about. Most of the violence is recent and around the same time as Rwanda, but I knew nothing. I also didn't know anything about how Liberia was founded, and was very surprised to find out the connection between the United States and Liberia's original colonies. These connections still have some impact today.

Sirleaf herself was greatly influenced by the United States. This is where she was educated, and she says she learned more about her country from the Harvard library than she'd ever learned while growing up. She was even in the states when JFK was assassinated.

Little factoid and case in point:
"Robert E. Lee, the American Confederate Civil War general, freed most of his slaves before the war and offered to pay their expenses to Liberia."

From the unification of Liberia:
"We are all of us Liberians."

There is some great fodder here about leadership, and that seemed to be what I honed in on.

From Sirleaf's own wisdom:
"So often it is the small decisions in life that end up shaping our future the most."

"I looked around and saw the lives of so many Liberian women, all of these incredibly hardworking market women and housewives and mothers, and what I saw was that their lives were drudgery, a simple trudging from day to day to day. I did not want that; that was not the life for me."

"We always felt that if anything really terrible began to happen, if ever things went seriously awry, America would come to our aid. America was our great father, our patron saint. It would never let us suffer. That's what so many of us in Liberia thought.
But then we found out that everyone has to stand on his own."

"People - usually women - sometimes ask me if, during my long climb up the career ladder, I ever bumped into any glass ceilings or encountered resistance to my taking a seat at the table because I am a woman and African. My answer is that I am sure there have been those who suspected me of being a token or who resented my having the positions I had. But I was usually too busy to worry about them."

"In this global age individuals are sometimes tempted to believe they have no power, not even collectively. This is not true. The public can make a difference if it is willing to take a position and stand up for a cause in which it believes. Against a united and committed public, even the harshest of governments cannot stand."

"This is the way of the world, of human nature, and if you want to lead, you have to accept that there will be conscious attempts to push you into oblivion. You have to be prepared to be very lonely sometimes."

"Progress may be slowed by oppression, but it will not be stopped."

"Men have failed us,' people said over and over again. 'Men are too violent, too prone to make war. Women are less corrupt, less likely to be focused on getting fancy cars and fancy home for themselves."

"Civilized nations must not be indifferent to any conflict - internal or external - regardless of the factors that fuel it."