Georgetown University: Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs: Say You're One of Them: African Jesuit Fr. Uwem Akpan SJ

Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Riggs Library
Reception to follow

Father Uwem Akpan spoke about his book entitled Say You're One of Them. The stories in this collection humanize the perils of poverty and violence, ranging from the depiction of a street family's poverty in Kenya, illegal trading of children in Gabon to inter-religious conflicts in Nigeria and Ethiopia and the terrible situation faced by a mixed Hutu-Tsutsi family in Rwanda. 

Father Akpan was interviewed by Rev. Fr. Alvaro Ribeiro, S.J., Associate Professor, Georgetown University Department of English. 

S.J. Akpan was born in a small village in Nigeria and is now a Jesuit priest. After studying philosophy at Creighton and Gonzaga universities, he studied theology at the Catholic university of East Africa. He received an MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan in 2006. Two of Akpan’s stories appeared in The New Yorker, and their publication led to a heated auction for rights to his collection, Say You're One of Them (Little, Brown & CO, June 8, 2008). One of the stories published in The New Yorker, “My Parent’s Bedroom” was one of five stories by African writers chosen as a finalist for the 2007 Caine Prize for African Writing, known as the African Booker Prize.