Book Review: Say You're One of Them

Hello Ladies and Gentlemen of the blog world and welcome to my third ever book review for naija daydreamer. There really is no need for a standing ovation. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I shall begin:

Say You’re One of Them

Uwem Akpan

“Selling your child or nephew could be more difficult than selling other kids. You had to keep a calm head or be ruthless as the Badagry-Seme immigration people. If not, it could bring trouble to the family. What kept our family secret from the world in the three months Fofo Kpee planned to sell us were his sense of humor and the smuggler’s instinct he had developed as an agbero, a tout, at the border. My sister Yewa was five, and I was ten”

-Excerpt from the story, Fattening for Gabon in “Say You’re One of Them”

No one has experienced the Oprah effect quite like Uwem Akpan, author of Say You’re One of Them. I had heard of the book previously from a friend, thought it had a catchy title but that was it. Cue a mention by the phenomenon that is Oprah (Fattening for Gabon is her favorite story), the prestigious title of Oprah Book Club Selection for 2009 and lo and behold, this book rises from mediocrity of having only sold 31,613 copies since July 2008 to being one of THE MOST coveted books on Amazon.

Oprah had never selected a collection of stories for her book club before; neither had she ever chosen a Nigerian. Infact Uwem Akpan is the first living African fiction author to be featured. The publishing houses got it. Immediately, 650,000 new copies of the book were ordered and Uwem became a bestselling author practically overnight.

Now let me state right away and for legal reasons that this book is not for the faint hearted. The stories alone are mind-boggling material to absorb, then factored in the narrators are children; it is a very difficult pill to swallow.

This book masterfully captures the innocence and the horror of what children in the continent of Africa face. It is a collection of five short stories tackling poverty, prostitution and religious wars and tribal violence across Kenya, Benin, Ethiopia, Nigeria and Rwanda. Still here? Okay snuggle up…

In “An Ex-mas Feast” young boy, Jigana, tells the story of his family’s life in a shanty makeshift home on the streets of Nairobi where his 12yr old sister, Maisha, works as a prostitute to help the family survive. On the night before Ex-mas, she leaves with white tourists who pay her to have sexual acts with a monkey, so the family may have enough to eat. The family sniffs glue to keep hunger pangs at bay and eagerly await her return.

I believe this was the perfect opening story, as you quickly discover if this is your cup of tea or not. The book holds no punches neither does it softly integrate you into the poverty-stricken lives of its narrators. It also introduces Uwem as a poetic writer. Each sentence reads like a verse and you unconsciously expect a rhyming couplet. As Jigana watches his mother decant the glue she intends to sniff, “it glows warm and yellow in the dull light” and when she had poured enough “the last stream of gum entering the bottle weakened and braided itself before tapering in midair like an icicle.” Such beautiful wordplay…

In “Fattening for Gabon” a brother and sister, Kotchikpa and Yewa, are held captive by an uncle who has sold them into a child trafficking ring for the price of a motorcycle. They are manipulated into believing it would be a better life with “Godparents” from an NGO who had previously saved their parents from ‘the aids’ and now had come to bestow their goodness on them as well.

This story has one of the best opening paragraphs I have ever read, you know this is not going to end well and yet you wish it so. Also what was interesting is how no character was placed as a villain for too long. The uncle is not a bad person; he is infact very kind to his niece and nephew and loves them dearly. After the scene in which the ‘Godparents’ meet the children, you begin to hope that they maybe have better lives ahead. The poignancy in this story sets in the fact that as the reader you know right away what the fate of the children is and this makes their excitement and enthusiasm to go to Gabon ever more painful to read.

Kotchikpa says “I began to think of how kind she must be to her own children, if she could be so motherly to us on our first meeting…she was my first contact with an NGO…I couldn’t stop thanking God in my heart for bringing such a woman to us.”

In “What Language Is That?” two little girls- one Christian one Muslim- are best friends until religious intolerant adults around them threaten to tear them apart. They do not understand why they are suddenly banned from speaking to one another and as a result have to develop a secret language in order to communicate.

In “Luxurious Hearses” 16yr old Muslim boy, Jubril hopes to escape the ethnic violence that has destroyed his city and as such disguises himself as a Christian so he may board a bus to safety. This story was the most difficult to read and in an oxymoronic way the most enjoyable. Maybe it’s because I am Nigerian, and so understood the lingua franca better than in other stories. Jubril himself is a conservative Muslim and so battled with mannerisms the entire story.

Situations such as women arguing with men disconcerted him, because where he grew up women weren’t allowed to ride on the same motorcycles as their fathers, husbands or brothers. Where he grew up single women were given a three month ultimatum to marry-even if it meant being third or fourth wives- or face losing their jobs. Where he came from he had participated in fire-bombing churches alongside fanatic friends.

The length of the story you hold your breath, praying he reaches his destination. Every time he is asked a question, you hope his Hausa accent does not slip out. Every time he is jostled by a passenger you hope his amputated arm does not poke out of his pocket. Like I said the most difficult and enjoyable to read…I like to think this is where the title of the book is derived from.

“Suddenly, it seemed the women were everywhere. Because of the crowd, some were pressing in on him. Many of them wore trousers and shorts, and some did not cover their heads. The voices of the younger girls floated in the Harmattan wind like a strange, sweet melody. Then his dispassionate attitude toward these Christian women shifted to humor then irony. To Jubril, they looked funny in their makeup and tight fitting trousers. He caught himself thinking about all the hijab and niqab and abaya that would be needed to cover them and shrugged”

In “My Parents’ Bedroom” nine year old girl, Monique, talks about the Rwandan genocide as she witnesses the terrifying insanity of her relatives. This is the story that will qualify you for therapy. I guarantee that…

“The big-bellied man asks me to hug him and looks at the younger man mischievously. Before I can say anything, he wriggles out of his yellow trousers and reaches for me. But I avoid his hands and slip under the bed with Jean. He pulls me out by my ankles.”

I guess what troubled me was the fact that although the book is fiction; the stories are real. Heart breaking works of fiction that parallel real lives for children in Africa.

They are absent of sentimentality and contain nearly unbearable-to-read violence toward children. His stories span Africa and as a result the book is a multilingual patois. Quickly you must acquaint yourself with glue-sniffing, brush up on your French, remind yourself of the constant threat of living in diverse religious areas and realize that Hotel Rwanda was not just a movie. Uwem’s gift is his open-mindedness, abhorrence of tribalism; he is comfortably able to inhabit the skin of others. The tales of horror are filtered through the wide eyes of the young as they observe the happenings around them, process the pictures they see but do not understand. They lack the words to express it and he cleverly speaks through them. Thus intensifying the horror they go through and shining a beacon of the unyielding hope that African children are inherently blessed with.

UMEM AKPAN studied philosophy and English. He was ordained as a Jesuit priest in 2003 and has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Michigan.

Watch the full Oprah webcast with Uwem Akpan here:

http://www.oprah.com/oprahsbookclub/Watch-Oprahs-Book-Club-Say-Youre-One-of-Them-Webcast-Video.

Say You’re One of Them is available at the one and only Amazon.

By S.B

Book Review:The thing around your neck

Hello Ladies and Gentlemen of the blog world, and welcome to my second book review for naija daydreamer. Please keep the applause down its making me blush. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I shall begin:

The Thing Around Your Neck
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

“Our men like to keep us here. She had told Nkem. They visit for business and vacations, they leave us and the children with big houses and cars, they get us housegirls from Nigeria who we don’t have to pay any outrageous American wages, and they say business is better in Nigeria and all that. But you know why they won’t move here, even if business were better here? Because America does not recognize Big Men. Nobody says ‘Sir! Sir!’ to them in America. Nobody rushes to dust their seats before they sit down.”- Excerpt from the story, Imitation in “The Thing Around Your Neck”

Allow me to introduce a writer who needs no introduction, corny but true. Adichie burst onto the literary scene with her debut novel Purple Hibiscus (the coming-of-age story of a young girl who lives under the shadow of her fanatically religious father) winner of the Commonwealth Writers Prize was hailed by the Baltimore Sun as “one of the best novels to come out of Africa in years” by the Boston Globe “prose as lush as the Nigerian landscape it powerfully evokes”…yes it is THAT good.
Chimamanda certainly did not disappoint as she responded three years later with her second novel the widely acclaimed, instant classic, Orange Prize-winning and may-I-write-like-that-someday Half of a Yellow Sun. With two novels in the bag she was crowned “the twenty-first-century daughter of Chinua Achebe” by the Washington Post. We do not need to explain what a crowning glory that is as Things Fall Apart is on the BBC list of books to read before you die. This 32 year old author has been described by HER favorite author as “having the gift of ancient storytellers”

With all this praise heaped upon her, her third novel was always going to be tricky. The critics have fallen in love with her graceful storytelling and character insight. The Thing Around Your Neck is a volume of twelve short stories which explore the collision of the Nigerian and American cultures and the lead characters as they try to reconcile them. Majority of her narrators are young and female.

The title story exemplifies her prevailing theme of homesickness. Turning it almost into a physical illness, “At night, something would wrap itself around your neck, something that very nearly choked you before you fell asleep.” it is here that the Thing Around Your Neck is shown as choking loneliness that renders you silent and invisible, not jewellery for your throat…like I originally thought.

Being narrated in the second person makes the story poignant, heart-wrenching in its sorrow and longing, the use of “You” instead of “she” makes the story personal. The unnamed 22-year-old narrator gains a longed-for American visa and goes to live with her uncle’s family in Maine. “They spoke Igbo and ate garri for lunch and it was like home,” recalls the girl, “until your uncle came into the cramped basement where you slept and pulled you forcefully to him, squeezing your buttocks, moaning… And you remembered what he said, that America was give-and-take.” As a result she has a hard time believing in the sincerity of a young white man's affection for her, looking for any signs of a condescending or patronizing attitude.

In “Cell One” the first story in the book, Adichie will refer to the coming-of-age story telling that she adopted for Kambili in Purple Hibiscus and you feel the exasperation of the young girl towards her older charming brother, as he is spoilt by his mother until he experiences a life changing situation.
“It was as if he had been suddenly been to see that the Incredible Hulk was really just green paint”

In “Imitation” a young mother finds her comfortable life threatened when she learns that her husband back at in Lagos has moved his mistress into their home. She can only confide in her housegirl “the madam/housegirl line has blurred in the years that she has had Amaechi. It is what America does to you, she thinks. It forces egalitarianism on you. You have nobody to talk to, really except for your toddlers, so you turn to your housegirl. And before you know it, she is your friend. Your equal. ”

In “A Private Experience” a medical student hides from a violent riot with a poor Muslim woman whose dignity and faith force her to confront the realities and fears she’s been pushing away. There is an instance when the older Muslim woman prays for Chika the protagonist of the story, “Allah keep your sister and Halima in a safe place,” Chika will nod in response because even with her foreign influence and exposure she was unsure of what Muslims say to show agreement, certain only that it wasn’t “Amen”.

In "Jumping Monkey Hill," a Nigerian novelist attends a writer's workshop given by an eminent, white, British scholar, where they each are to write and present a story. The scholar turns out to be the type who knows more about Africa than Africans- or he would like to think. He criticizes one person's work because stories about homosexuals coming out to their families aren't representative of "the real" Africa. This has been reported as being the most autobiographical of all the author’s stories.

The last story “Headstrong Historian” is my absolute favorite. A masterpiece, the greatest short story ever told. Infact my major compliant is that it was not drawn out to blossom into a full novel, it certainly has the potential. It is pure genius, for the entire duration you are left just in awe of how the author zips between timelines and locations all the while never compromising on dialogue or scenery. It is a melting pot of colonialism, Western education and Christianity in a tiny Igbo village as narrated by Nwamgba. This lady has to be amongst my top 5 heroines of ALL time.
Her wit, self-belief, survival instinct, stubbornness, and fierce protection of her family are traits to pray for. She fell in love with her husband at first sight and never stopped loving him. She pushes her son to learn to read so when the time came he could defend his inheritance from his leech uncles. As Anikwenwa drifts further away condemning her nakedness and refusal to eat her food, she wonders if “she meddled with his destiny” A love story in reverse, Nwamgba passes on her knowledge of her world to her granddaughter, the only family member eager to learn clay pottery and poetry that involved the traditional call and response.


Adichie’s gift is her ability to manipulate language almost invisibly and with deceptively effortless grace she moves between Igbo and English. Her stories are also immediately intimate, absorbing you into their imagined world because she inspires the readers’ confidence with only a few sentences.
Although some of these stories, feature women in circumstances that cry "victim", none of the women are drawn as such. They might have to do things they don't like, or compromise about certain things, but so does everybody else. Not once do you ever get the feeling that any of Adichie's characters have been created as deliberate objects of sympathy. What's even more refreshing is that her characters are neither victims nor super heroes. They are humans dealing with situations that come up in their lives just like we all have to. In circumstances we can identify with and emotions we can experience.
If there are flaws in the collection they are minor faults of structure – a couple of stories simply stop, rather than reaching a conclusion, while the compression of the final narrative, “The Headstrong Historian”, is so intense that it feels as though it should have been allowed to blossom into something longer.

Purple Hibiscus was about freedom, and the blurred line between childhood and adulthood; Half of a Yellow Sun was about moral responsibility, love and betrayal during the Biafran war; The Thing Around Your Neck is all these and more. Chimamanda Adichie produced a melting pot of stories and a work of genius. The sort of book that I am positive will make more sense and increase in depth the more times I read it. That is timeless art.
Available at the one and only Amazon,




Enjoy

By S.B

BOOK REVIEW-THE MRS CLUB.......

Hello Ladies and Gentlemen of the blog world, and welcome to my first ever book review for naija daydreamer. I LOVE books, if I get my nose in one I become incognito till the very last page. Losing myself in the authors mind, I befriend his characters as we fight injustice in difficult eras, solve mysteries, witness western showdowns and fall in love. This is my CV but my problem is once I’ve begun a book I can’t stop- no matter how bad it is. It will be so nice to have someone recommend worthwhile books, the ones that reward you with a good read for the time invested. Ta da! Here I am. All the way helping to fluff pillows and settle you down snugly into a good book while also pledging to scream from the roof tops the train wrecks to steer clear of. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I shall begin:

The Mrs. Club
Ekene Onu

“You see in the African community, age is definitely not on a woman’s side. When you are about 22, you are put in the front window and are marked for sale. Then when you are about 26, they mark you 50% off, 75% off when you are 28 and then when you are 30, the sign is changed to say: “ALL GOODS MUST GO!”"- Excerpt from the book, “The Mrs Club”.

This book has garnered rave reviews for its bold look at the desperate attempts of Nigerian singletons fast approaching their sell by date- ergo the treacherous thirties to get husbands and attain a pass into the prestigious Mrs. Club. The book is well-suited to the new generation of African women who are career orientated and as such have higher expectations of the men they deserve to settle down with. This topic is wonderfully taken apart and put back together by the help of the three title characters: Titi, Amaka and Mina.

Titi takes the stage as the “tell it like it is” friend and doesn’t believe in calling a spade a big spoon. “I cannot marry down” she repeatedly states. The naughty girl is lived through her as she goes on lavish dates with eligible men, has fantastic sex and does it all in stilettos ala Sex and the City’s’ Samantha.
Amaka is my fav as she plays the romantic, believing that love should be the defining factor. A good girl she never indulges in anything that won’t yield a possible future. Her vulnerability is endearing as she struggles to love her full shaped figure and find a passion for career she entered into because it “was the right thing to do”.
Mina is the only married friend but proves that keeping a husband for appearances is just as exhausting as finding one. So her sex life sucks and he couldn’t find her g-spot with a map. Love be damned is her motto. You have to be smart about these things, it’s all about investing. She is our bitch- enough said. Her French manicured nails are tightly dug into her husband Obinna the surgeon.

The beauty of these characters is that no character is presented as one perfect model, u restrain you from wishing Amaka was a little more like Titi and Mina a little less, well, a little less Mina. The re-current theme of the story tackles cultural schizophrenia as these women hold down professional jobs, “hunt” down husbands, tackle meddling in-laws, appease over bearing parents and attempt to hold down traditional customs. I especially like the part where Amaka adapts moin-moin to serve to an African-American friend by infusing it with coconut milk. Ummmmmm… delish, must try that some time.

My criticisms are few, for one the narrative is not that good. The chapter where Titi goes to the mall is quite abrupt in scene selection. Once you get over the initial blocky start and acquaint yourself with the method of writing hewn for each character (Titi is more colloquial, Amaka more reflective and Mina more…just more) you still feel sometimes yanked out from one scenario and plopped onto another. Mrs. Club focuses more on the banter between its characters and not what position the sun was in when this was said- which I happen to like.
There is a whiff of a lesson to be learnt at the end. Readers who don’t particularly enjoy the pastor saving the day part common in Nollywood movies might roll their eyes here.

All in all for a first time novelist this is very insightful work. Ekene Onu is a thirty something writer and currently resides in Atlanta with her husband and daughter. She began writing a blog naija woman while she was at university in Boston before starting up and editing her own magazine called Nouveau Africana. Mrs. Club is self-published. Ekene got married at 29 and says that the collective sigh of her family members was clearly audible.

This book provides a satisfying read for those that don’t like “too much grammar” and just want a good story with a couple shake head moments, a few oh my! plenty of read out loud to your girlfriends. Mina learns she can’t do it all by herself, Titi the joy of restraint and Amaka finds happiness in the one place she didn’t look. The twists and turns are correctly placed and you never see them coming- just when you thought you knew everything….

Available at the one and only Amazon, go and grab your copy NOW!!!

S.B xxx