Uwem akpan biography samples

  • The poet and memoirist Mary Karr wrote that Uwem Akpan "has invented a new language—both for horror and for the relentless persistence of light in war-torn.
  • Uwem Akpan answers your questions about being a Jesuit priest, what his childhood was like and the role his faith played in writing Say You're One of Them.
  • Uwem Akpan interview: After publishing 'An Ex-Mas Feast', one of the stories in his first collection Say You're One of Them (2008), in The New Yorker's.

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    Say You're One of Them
    Questions and topics for discussion

    1. Each of the stories in Say You’re One of Them is told from the perspective of a child. Do you think this affected your reaction? If the narrators had been adults, might you have felt differently about the stories? Why do you think Akpan chose to depict these events through children’s eyes? How do Akpan’s young characters maintain innocence in the face of corruption and pain?
    2. In "An Ex-mas Feast," Maisha leaves her family to become a full-time prostitute. Do you think she chose to depart, or did her family’s poverty force her to flee? Is it possible to have complete freedom of will in such a situation? Is it reasonable to judge a person for her actions if her choice is not entirely her own?
    3. In "Fattening for Gabon" the children’s uncle and caretaker, Fofo Kpee, sells them into slavery. How does Fofo’s poverty and vanity contribute to his unthinkable actions? Do his pangs of conscience re

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      Review

      "Awe is the only appropriate response to Uwem Akpan's stunning debut, Say You're One of Them, a collection of five stories so ravishing and sad that I regret ever wasting superlatives on fiction that was merely very good. A."―Jennifer Reese, Entertainment Weekly (EW Pick / Grade A)

      "[A] startling debut collection... Akpan is not striving for surreal effects. He is summoning miseries that are real.... He fuses a knowledge of African poverty and strife with a conspicuously literary approach to storytelling filtering tales of horror through the wide eyes of the young."―Janet Maslin, New York Times

      "Uwem Akpan's searing Say You're One of Them captures a ravaged Africa through the dry-eyed gaze of children trying to maintain a sense of normalcy amid chaos."―Megan O'Grady, Vogue

      "Akpan wants you to see and feel Africa, its glory and its pain. And you do, which makes this an extraordinary book."―Vince Passaro, O Magazine

      "Uwem Akpan, a Nigerian Jesuit priest, has said he was in

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      My Parent's Bedroom (A Story from Say You're One of Them)

      About this audiobook

      Uwem Akpan's stunning stories humanize the perils of poverty and violence so piercingly that few readers will feel they've ever encountered Africa so immediately. The eight-year-old narrator of "An Ex-Mas Feast" needs only enough money to buy books and pay fees in order to attend school. Even when his twelve-year-old sister takes to the streets to raise these meager funds, his dream can't be granted. Food comes first. His family lives in a street shanty in Nairobi, Kenya, but their way of both loving and taking advantage of each other strikes a universal chord.
      In the second of his stories published in a New Yorker special fiction issue, Akpan takes us far beyond what we thought we knew about the tribal conflict in Rwanda. The story is told bygd a young girl, who, with her little brother, witnesses the worst possible scenario between parents. They are asked to do th

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