While we’d love to think we inspired Oprah to choose Uwem Akpan’s Say You’re One of Them as her current book club pick, we are glad his collection of stories is getting lots of new readers. Last year we asked Sojourners contributing writer Kimberly Burge to profile this important writer — probably the first Nigerian Jesuit priest ever to have two stories published in The New Yorker. Burge writes about Akpan’s double calling as a priest and writer, his early training in religious formation as well as the craft of writing. “More and more,” Akpan says, “I’m beginning to believe that Christ was both a priest and a poet.”
Say You’re One of Them is comprised of two novellas and three stories, each a combination of beautiful writing and horrific subject matter – child trafficking, genocide, religious and tribal divisions, and desperate poverty. Each of the stories takes place in a different African country, and all are told through the perspectives of children. “One of my teachers at Michigan said something very moving to me,” Akpan says. “He said, ‘You’ve got to make sure the stories work very well. Remember, these children have been used. By their parents, by their governments. Even some NGOs used these children to make money, and some of this money is not getting to them. The last thing you want to do is just use their voices to tell your story.’ I don’t want to go and colonize another country and their people. That’s what you do when you show people as they are not.”
Click here to read the full profile in Sojourners.
Molly Marsh is an associate editor of Sojourners.
