Say You're One of Them (Platinum Fiction Series)

Uwem Akpan was born in Ikot Akpan Eda in southern Nigeria. After studying philosophy and English at Creighton and Gonzaga universities, he studied theology for three years at the Catholic University of Eastern Africa. He was ordained as a Jesuit priest in 2003 and received his MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan in 2006. My Parents’ Bedroom, a story from his short story collection, Say You’re One of Them, was one of five short stories by African writers chosen as finalists for The Caine Prize for African Writing 2007. Say You’re One of Them won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book (Africa Region) 2009 and PEN/Beyond Margins Award 2009, and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction. In 2007, Akpan taught at a Jesuit college in Harare, Zimbabwe. Now he serves at Christ the King Church, Ilasamaja-Lagos, Nigeria.

This abridgment includes three stories from Nigerian writer Uwem Akpan's collection. The title story, "Say You're One of Them," recounts horrifying days in the Rwandan Hutu-Tutsi conflict, narrated in the first person by a young girl. Robin Miles adopts a lovely French-African accent, and if she allows Akpan's beautiful turns of phrase to shine, the underlying tension and fear are also never far from the surface. Miles also narrates "What Language Is That?" This story is partially unaccented, a choice that accentuates the second-person point of view. "An Ex-Mas Feast" follows the sometimes-humorous, sometimes-bleak fortunes of a street family in Nairobi. Dion Graham, in Kenyan-accented English, successfully embodies the family's mother and father, teenaged daughter, and young son. Overall, not an easy listen, but a worthwhile one. J.M.D. © AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine