Ok, getting back on track with these book posts. Took a bit of a break once I knew I wasn't going to make my self-imposed end of October deadline. The only problem is I keep on reading more books! When I started catching up, this review was the last one, but since then I've read another and now am on the verge of finishing yet another one! So if I am behind writing about books, it may just be because I am reading.
Say You're One Of Them by Uwem Akpan has been on my to-be-read list for quite some time. Entertainment Weekly named it their Top Fiction Book of 2008 and their list has grown to be on of those year-end/"best of" lists that I trust the most. Two great finds this year, The House on Fortune Street and The Book of Dahlia, have come from this very list, so needless to say their top selection was very much on my radar. But you avid readers know how it goes, intending to read a book never quite gets you there, so when Oprah picked this as her latest book selection, it provided me the impetus to finally get to it. Say what you will, but Oprah is another fairly reliable source for me and I do like that feeling of being part of reading something that a whole lot of others are reading as well.
Given these endorsements, it comes as no surprise that my expectations were pretty high. One thing that helped out was that I have got over my ill feelings about the short story genre. This is another thing that deserves a blog entry of its own, but I think thanks to stuff like Twitter and the ilk that my attention span is shrinking at an alarming rate, so perhaps it is no mere coincidence that I am suddenly embracing the short stories and novellas. Akpan's collection is a little bit of both, 3 short stories and 2 novellas (anything over a 100 pages, I think stops being "short").
To cut to the chase, this ultimately ended up being a split decision for me. The subject matter of all these stories I think are incredibly important and incredibly under-reported. Akpan says in the Q&A, "The world is not looking. I think fiction allows us to sit for a while with people we would rather not meet... I want their voices heard, their faces seen." It was impossible not to be moved by the tales of prostitution, human trafficking, religious persecution, and civil war particularly as each is told through the eyes of a child (or a young person). It just sickening that these kind of atrocities were (and in many cases still are!) part of everyday life on the African continent.
While I still think educating yourself takes precedence in tackling a book like this, I did have issues with the literary aspect of it. I found it a very difficult read (beyond the subject matter) in the use of challenging to read dialects, character names that are unusual at a times similar that make it hard to keep straight who's who, and (while I hate to say it since these stories are based on the true events) it just seemed like it was a continual one-upmanship with the violence. You don't think it could get any worse... and in the next story, it does. Additionally, I think Akpan did a excelled more in the 3 short stories as I really had some pacing issues with the longer works, kind of zoning in and out (just reading words at times vs. the "story").
So a really tough call. Again, and incredibly eye-opening work that deserves attention. In my renewed reading effort over these past few years, I have tried to travel the world through books and I think African (or African-based, like Little Bee) literature is really an important stop along the way and certainly not just the relatively jolly world of Alexander McCall Smith's Mma Ramotswe in the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series. But again, not a book that I enjoyed or can honestly recommend from a literary standpoint. Though others certainly disagree. This book had a solid maximum 5-star reviewer ratings on book websites and I've seen Oprah readers rave about it, though I sense I am not alone in thinking that subject matter "talking" more than Akpan's literary skill (though he certainly has his moments).
