Zain E. Asher, WHERE THE CHILDREN TAKE US:
[0:02]Hi, I'm Zivi Owens, the creator and host of the award-winning podcast that you're listening to right now.
[0:07]Thank you so much.
[0:08]Called moms don't have time to read books.
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[0:58]Zane Asher is the author of Where the Children Take Us, how one family achieved the unimaginable.
[1:04]Zane, Age of Four, Asher, was born to first-generation Nigerian parents in South London.
[1:10]A graduate of Oxford University and Columbia University, she's currently an anchor for CNN International.
[1:16]She anchors one world with Zane Asher, her own global news program on the network.
[1:21]Age of Four, Asher's brothers are Oscar-nominated actor Chiwetel, Age of Four,
[1:27]who was in 12 years of slave, successful entrepreneur, Abine Zay, and medical doctor Ken D. Bay.
[1:35]She lives in the New York area with her husband and two sons, and Zane is doing the launch event
[1:41]with me for bookends along with Jenny Mullin and Elizabeth Schalaski, and I am so excited about that.
[1:47]Welcome, Zane. Thank you so much for coming on mom's time to read books, to discuss
[1:51]where the children take us, how one family achieved the unimaginable. Thank you so much,
[1:57]Zane. I'm still smiling ear-to-ear because before we started recording this, Zane had been
[2:03]talking to me about that bookends, it has been like the nicest person ever, so I'm literally
[2:08]just glowing as I talked to her about her book. I love that, Zane, honestly, it was actually
[2:13]I could have put it down. Thank you. Okay, where are the children take us? Speaking of,
[2:18]I couldn't put it down. I posted that I read this all in a plane and I was like, you know,
[2:22]frantically reading. I fell in love with you and your family, all the things that you've been through,
[2:27]the way that you write. Like, I am so rooting for you for everyone. I was like, wait,
[2:34]I want to hear more now. Like, where is the P.S. about this brother? And like, what is your
[2:39]sister doing? And like, I need to hear more. I want to like, anyway, you did a fabulous,
[2:43]amazing job of taking us through your life and your parents' lives and the history and so much.
[2:50]Why don't you, I guess, explain what your book's about. Why you decided to write and share all
[2:56]this about your family and your life and we'll go from there. Yeah, all my books,
[3:00]did you thank you so much? So the book was a difficult one to write because it starts off,
[3:05]as you know, with basically the worst day in my family's life, collective life. My mother
[3:12]is at home in London and she gets a phone call and the voice on the other end of the line basically
[3:18]says to her, your husband and your son have been involved in a car crash. One of them is dead
[3:23]and we don't know which one. It is earth shadowing. I mean, she to this day will describe
[3:29]that phone call as an emotional earthquake. I mean, there's no other way to basically put it.
[3:34]So my dad and my brother were on a road trip in Nigeria, which is where we're originally from.
[3:39]They were traveling from this sort of small town called Enugu going on the road to Lagos,
[3:44]which is like the New York of Nigeria. And it's supposed to be a six hour drive and somewhere along
[3:51]the freeway, the person driving them swerved into the opposite lane to cut traffic. And as the
[3:57]car went around the bend, it hit a blind spot and it was crushed by a speeding tractor trailer.
[4:02]And everybody in the car was killed instantly apart from one person in the back seat where my dad
[4:08]and my brother was sitting. And so initially the relatives and our family extended relatives who were
[4:14]all sort of living in Nigeria were told that both of them had died in the car accident.
[4:20]And hours later, some other relatives had word that no, no, no, maybe one of them survived,
[4:24]maybe the little boy might have survived. And hours later, another group of relatives had
[4:28]actually heard that both of them were killed. There was so much confusion on the scene of the
[4:32]accident. And you know, so there was just a lot of debate happening. And then somebody
[4:37]while the sort of debate was going on, somebody actually called my mother to tell them
[4:41]without having all the facts. So it turned out it was my dad who died in that car accident.
[4:47]My mother traveled to Nigeria and on the plane had no idea, no idea who she was going to be
[4:53]burying out. And she was pregnant by the way was pregnant. She had three kids and she was pregnant.
[4:57]No idea who she was going to be burying that week, but that was going to be her husband or her son.
[5:01]And it was pure agony, pure agony, the weight, the weight, you know? And so yeah, as I mentioned
[5:07]to get to Nigeria, she goes to the hospital where the hospital attached to a morgue. So she was
[5:13]told where to go. And her relatives, our relatives were planning on meeting her there to sort of
[5:19]break the news when they eventually found out gently. But she got there before them and she found
[5:24]out that it was my dad who died and it was her son, my brother who had been spared. And so the
[5:29]book really is a celebration of my mother's strength because one of the questions I've always been
[5:34]asked my whole life is how on earth did your mother do it? How on earth did this woman who was
[5:38]an African widow, immigrant, obviously growing up or living in South London and a neighborhood that
[5:44]was kind of rough beset by poverty and crime? How on earth did she manage to raise you, a CNN anchor,
[5:49]your brother and Oscar nominated actor? My brother was nominated for starring in 12 years of slave.
[5:53]He's an actor, my sister, a doctor and my eldest brother, a very successful entrepreneur. How on
[5:58]earth could this woman have done that? And so the book is a celebration of my mother. It's my way
[6:05]of saying thank you to her. And it's my way of really explaining in detail how she did it,
[6:09]you know, which I think is a very ultimately, even though it starts off with this difficult sort of
[6:14]heartbreaking tragedy that happened to us, it's ultimately a story of hope. Wow. Yes, all of that
[6:21]amazing. It is a story of hope. She is the most remarkable woman and she is still alive. I mean,
[6:27]I feel like I want to give her a huge hug and be like hats off to you from all of the moms out there.
[6:33]I mean, not it's not even it's not even just that you all went on to have successful careers,
[6:38]although that is remarkable in and of itself. It's that like it's the type of people like look at
[6:44]how great a person you are. I know we were talking about this earlier, but the heart and humanity and
[6:49]work ethic and all of the things that you all have sort of overcome and achieved and the way in
[6:57]which you did it and the family commitment and and all of it. It's just it's remarkable. I do appreciate
[7:03]by the way. I mean, this reminds me of like the Tiger mom book from a while ago, you know, like
[7:09]confessions. Right. Right. And that like there are all these different parenting styles and just
[7:13]from the parenting style, tragedy, heartache, everything else, even even just to put all that aside
[7:19]for two seconds and just talk about her parenting techniques when she got rid of the TV and like broke
[7:24]the cord and installed a payphone in your house. I mean, this is no joke. We talk a little bit about
[7:33]and this is she was determined to get you into Oxford. And by the way, there was one line.
[7:38]I'm sorry. I'm like all over the place because I'm so excited about all the stuff in this book.
[7:42]Let me see if I can find the passage, but there's one passage where every time she was concerned
[7:47]about behavior or anything, there was no punishment. She just like drove you back to Oxford to see
[7:52]what you could have. Right. Yes. So I would I would say that, you know, just to sort of backtrack a little
[8:00]bit. It was very, very hard for us after we got home to London after my dad's funeral. Yes, it was
[8:06]my mom would sort of. And I should say I am so sorry. I shouldn't have jumped right into that.
[8:11]I'm the tragedy that happened and all of the details surrounding it and the aftermath and all of
[8:18]it was so heartbreaking to read. So heartbreaking and it was so visual. I feel like I was in that room.
[8:25]I feel like I could see your little brother in the bed. Who, by the way, I did not realize was going
[8:28]to become the actor winning the actor nominated. I didn't realize that whole thing at all until
[8:33]like you reveal it in the book. Anyway, I'm very sorry for all that you've been through and your
[8:38]mom's been through and your whole family. So my gosh, sweetie, thank you for the kind words. So
[8:42]yeah, it was really difficult after you got that from London because what basically happened is that
[8:46]my mom was unable to parent. She was in such shock and she was in, as I mentioned, just such a state of
[8:55]deep, deep emotional agony and pain and trauma that she essentially locked herself in her bedroom
[9:00]hours at a time and just all we would hear is little kids were screaming and crying and screaming
[9:07]and crying on the other side of the door. And so we didn't really have a mother or a father for
[9:13]quite a while is what it felt like. And my eldest brother who was 14 when my dad passed away,
[9:18]you know, that's a really difficult age anyway for a boy. So transitioning from boyhood to manhood,
[9:23]that is the time when you need a father figure. He got kicked out of school and he used to be
[9:27]a sort of straight A student. He got kicked out of school, started hanging out with a wrong crowd,
[9:32]sort of, you know, was sort of consumed by the streets, you know, and that was a bit of a wake-up
[9:37]call for my mom because after that she sort of realized my gosh, I need to get my family back on track.
[9:42]I mean, as an immigrant coming from Africa, there are only reasons why you move to all the
[9:47]main reason I should say why you move to the United States or to the UK is so that your kids can
[9:52]have a better education, you know, to give your kids a better life. And so to not just have a
[9:56]husband pass away in this horrific way, but to have her older son who
[10:00]very very bright young boy get kicked out of school that was a big wake-up
[10:04]off my mom. And so my mother began and this is you know that sort of a
[10:08]meat of the book. She began to sort of implement very sort of clear structure
[10:13]and routine to keep us focused on school work to keep us focused on anything
[10:18]besides the empty chair at the dinner table and to keep my eldest brother
[10:22]away from the streets. And one of the things the first thing that she did was a
[10:26]a family book club. I meant to talk about that first. I love the family
[10:30]book club that was a genius idea. But the only book club I was only five years
[10:35]old at the time so it was really designed for my oldest brothers and she
[10:38]would basically give them texts or books to read usually the classic so we're
[10:42]thinking you know Mark Twain where you are kept laying and they would have to
[10:46]sort of discuss the at the dinner table every Friday night. When I got a little
[10:49]bit older she asked my teacher for my school syllabus for the year and she
[10:55]looked down my school syllabus. This is when I was like sort of seven eight
[10:58]years old and she would figure out what I was going to be learning in school
[11:01]and maybe a month or two months and she would teach it to me ahead of time
[11:06]beforehand so that by the time I learned to in school by the time the
[11:10]teachers taught it in school I'd already mastered it and I already knew it
[11:14]inside out. And of course and she was coming home from her job 14 hours
[11:19]day on her feet at the pharmacy that she owned and it come home and do this
[11:23]with you for three hours at night. I mean this is amazing. Yeah and it changed my
[11:28]life because even at the age of seven I could see I could understand for the
[11:32]first time that what you put into something is what you get out of it and by
[11:37]knowing everything that the teachers were teaching already because my mother
[11:39]sort of secretly taught me ahead of time it meant that the teachers started
[11:43]treating me a lot differently. I became this role model for my entire class. I
[11:47]became you know we weren't graded at age seven but it would be the equivalent of
[11:51]basically a straight age student and you know anytime there were sort of
[11:54]awards to give out to the kids or whatever my name would always come up as
[11:58]number one and it sort of fueled my desire to go home and do that again and
[12:03]learn in advance again with my mom and one of the other things she did was
[12:08]what sort of she refers to we refer to as the eight hour rule as we were
[12:12]coming up which was you know she would make us divide our day into three
[12:16]equal parts. So obviously there's 24 hours in a day and so she would make us
[12:20]divide it into three parts of eight hours each and she would say right eight
[12:24]hours to be spent sleeping eight hours to be spent in school and the last eight
[12:29]hours of your day should be spent working towards your dreams because her
[12:33]whole philosophy was that listen everybody generally sleeps for eight hours
[12:37]everybody generally you know either is in school or at work the eight hours
[12:42]obviously they're lucky enough to just have one job. So the only thing that can
[12:46]ever set your part in life the only thing that can ever distinguish you
[12:49]distinguish you from the next person is how you spend the last eight hours of
[12:52]your day. I'm not again sort of translated through high school for me you know it
[12:57]really changed our work ethic and you know that my mother who was solely
[13:01]motivated in the early days by you know just keeping my oldest brother out of
[13:05]trouble ended up with all of these sort of parenting amazing sort of
[13:09]parenting you know philosophies that really changed our family's life and
[13:13]allowed us to live up to our highest potential and then we can get to the
[13:17]it was just it's really just a continuation of that it's how she
[13:22]modeled success and made everything attainable she's not like try this and
[13:26]maybe you'll achieve this she was like you're gonna do this like I'm gonna
[13:30]show you how like she gave you the whole roadmap and never
[13:34]really wavered even when there were setbacks even with like the
[13:37]the school where the horrible girl like planted that oh my gosh that was
[13:41]terrible talk about that for a second that was like her
[13:44]effect and that she pulled you out of the school and she you know you just
[13:46]move on to the next and then you know you're not gonna derail you
[13:50]yeah I mean so my mom grew up in Nigeria right so in Nigeria
[13:59]everyone is black so skin color is not a thing nobody talks about race
[14:03]nobody talks about skin color it's just not even brought up so
[14:06]when when she came to England and she moved to England in the 1970s
[14:10]it was really difficult for her to experience racism and
[14:15]England in the 1970s was sort of like you know there were sort of posters
[14:19]put up saying keep England white you know and so for somebody who had
[14:23]never understood the concept of like race and skin color that was really
[14:27]difficult because she'd grown up surrounded by black in a
[14:31]country where everyone who's black everybody was generally you know
[14:34]African and race was just not something that anyone cared about
[14:38]talked about whatever so when we sort of grew up you know
[14:43]each of us my siblings and I did experience racism at different times
[14:47]and it was very hard for her to navigate or understand how to sort of give us
[14:53]advice she came up with a few strategies but as you point out there was a
[14:57]point where I went to a school and it was a boarding school that I went to
[15:01]briefly and the kids basically my gosh it's so difficult to talk about now
[15:07]but one of the other girls she had a money box
[15:11]that went missing and up until this point although the kids were
[15:15]really nice to me they were really nice and you know they knew that I was
[15:19]originally from Nigeria I mean asked all sorts of questions about Nigeria I was
[15:22]kind of like as one of the few black girls I was kind of like a curiosity
[15:26]but when the money box went missing things started to change me
[15:31]very very quickly and we had this sort of one afternoon whereby
[15:37]the nuns at the school would take each child up to their dorm room to check
[15:43]their drawers for this missing money box while a nun looked on
[15:48]so the nun you would watch while the nuns would have looked through your
[15:51]drawers looking for this missing money box because
[15:53]their whole philosophy was that theft would not be tolerated that same
[15:56]varies which is perfectly understandable so one at a time each we
[16:00]were sort of doing our homework one at a time each student went up
[16:04]and they would come back down then another student would go up with the nuns
[16:07]their drawers would be searched and then they would come back down to class
[16:09]eventually was my turn and I thought great you know this is I've done nothing
[16:12]wrong and they started looking through my drawers in front of me
[16:16]and I was like blah blah blah blah blah and then in the third or second
[16:20]draw they moved aside my clothes and there was the money box
[16:24]and I said to the nuns oh my gosh you know I was only 12 years old I was like
[16:28]oh my gosh I didn't I didn't put that there that wasn't they did not care
[16:32]as far as they were concerned I was a thief and I'd stolen this money box and
[16:38]I explained to them that no you have to understand somebody must have put
[16:41]somebody must have put that in my drawers I promise you they did not care
[16:45]and from that moment onwards I was completely shunned in this school
[16:50]and my mother was called you know it was a whole thing
[16:54]and I was so isolated so alone you know my days would be spent
[16:59]because having not having friends in school is one thing but not having friends
[17:02]in a school where everybody sort of stays the night is like kind of like it's
[17:06]really excruciating and so eventually you know after seeing me
[17:11]sort of get shunned and ignored the person who actually planted
[17:15]that money box on me had actually confessed to an older student who forced her
[17:20]to talk to the nuns about it and so the nuns eventually sort of they
[17:24]didn't really apologize to me but they told me listen we now know that it
[17:27]wasn't you because the girl who plants don't you did come forward and
[17:30]but it was too late my mother already took me out of that school by that
[17:33]point and so I only had I was only there for literally one
[17:37]I think Americans call it one semester but it's like it's like a term we call
[17:40]an English term it's like just really like three months but it was one of
[17:44]the worst it was the first time I really understood like race and
[17:49]you know I lost my innocence a bit at that point but you know one of the
[17:53]things that my mother did because the book sort of centers around
[17:56]lessons you know parent yes and one of the things that she did when it came
[18:01]to sort of dealing with race and some of the issues because she had no idea
[18:05]you know how to navigate that stuff as I mentioned
[18:06]but one of the things she did was she would find when we lost our
[18:10]competence we felt that sort of you know and every sort of
[18:14]every sort of minority that's growing up in a society where their
[18:17]different has also there's all sorts of insecurities that come with that
[18:20]there's all sorts of feelings that inferiority inferiority that come
[18:23]with that and so what she did was she would find newspaper clippings of
[18:26]black success stories and she would cut them out
[18:29]it was any sort of any time she saw an article about a black person or
[18:32]especially if they were West African who had done something extraordinary with
[18:36]their lives she would cut out the newspaper clippings and she would
[18:39]plaster them to our walls so it would come home and we would be bombarded with
[18:43]image after image of black people people who look like us would just like us
[18:47]especially if they were immigrants who had done something extraordinary
[18:49]their lives and who would overcome something and sort
[18:52]and this was such an important lesson because there's that saying that
[18:56]the only thing that could hold a person back in life is the perception they
[18:59]have of themselves and my mother literally changed
[19:02]the perception we had of ourselves through doing that she also had like this
[19:05]binder of like black success stories that she would look through
[19:08]and I sort of think that this is one of my favorite lessons because
[19:12]regardless of what race you are it doesn't matter whether you're black, white,
[19:15]whether you're Asian whether it doesn't matter
[19:18]every child has a tape that plays an end mind
[19:22]about what they can and can't achieve in life every child has that
[19:26]and as a parent it's sometimes very difficult to figure out
[19:30]what your child's tape is saying because it's not as if their thoughts are
[19:34]printed on their forehead you have no idea
[19:36]fortunately as minorities my mom kind of sort of knew what the tape was
[19:41]saying you know and so her process was to
[19:45]undo that tape to sort of get me to play a different tape in my head
[19:51]and you know just seeing all these people all these I call them in the book
[19:55]uplifters in my language it translates as
[19:57]in the edgiamato which means those who set the
[20:00]that was what my mother was looking for in these articles.
[20:02]And it changed, it changed my belief in myself.
[20:05]It made me think, wow, yes, I'm a minority.
[20:08]Yes, I might be one of the only black girls
[20:10]in some of these situations,
[20:11]but I can still make it.
[20:15]I can still work hard.
[20:16]My mother convinced me that the people in these articles
[20:18]were just like us.
[20:19]And if we worked the way they worked,
[20:21]as hard as they did, we could have what they had.
[20:24]And I remember specifically one afternoon,
[20:27]I came home from school, and my bedroom mirror was missing.
[20:30]And my mother had replaced my bedroom mirror
[20:32]with articles of black success stories.
[20:36]And I asked her where it was.
[20:38]And her words were simply she responded,
[20:41]let's focus on how you look, more focus,
[20:43]and what you can become.
[20:45]And that was just, that was huge for me, you know?
[20:49]So amazing.
[20:51]She was just amazing.
[20:53]It's, it's no, it's motivating.
[20:56]And empowering and all the things.
[21:00]You know, I know they do this.
[21:00]I had a tour at one point.
[21:02]I was like a school for dyslexia and all the,
[21:05]that my stepmothers involved in.
[21:07]But anyway, like all throughout the halls
[21:09]are pictures of people who are dyslexic
[21:11]and all of the amazing things that they have achieved.
[21:13]And it's the same kind of,
[21:15]it's, you can take whatever it is you're trying to overcome
[21:19]or that you feel like may hinder you
[21:21]not for any fault of your own,
[21:23]but because of society,
[21:24]like you can take anything.
[21:25]And just, you know, as long as you have the,
[21:29]the goals, as long as you can see it, right?
[21:31]It's just amazing.
[21:32]You know?
[21:33]The human brain in order to overcome a belief,
[21:36]the human brain needs evidence.
[21:38]You know, the brain is an evidence seeking, you know,
[21:42]organ or whatever.
[21:43]Yes.
[21:44]And so if you want to change a belief about yourself,
[21:46]it's not enough just to wake up
[21:48]and just sort of change a belief.
[21:50]You have to see evidence.
[21:51]That is the way the brain works.
[21:52]Yeah.
[21:53]Regardless of what it is,
[21:54]as you point out,
[21:55]whether it's dyslexia, whatever it is,
[21:57]whether it is a belief that, you know,
[21:59]based on, you know, how you look or what race you are,
[22:01]you're not going to be able to achieve certain things, whatever.
[22:04]Once the brain sees evidence, that is not the case.
[22:07]That's how the brain begins to undo those beliefs.
[22:09]I don't know how on earth, my mother knew that,
[22:13]like intuitively, but you know, you know,
[22:16]anyway, I'm just going to cry.
[22:17]I think you're on my mother because
[22:18]she's just all the things that she did, you know?
[22:22]And some of them, some of them were quite extreme.
[22:25]You know, you brought up the Oxford thing,
[22:27]which is kind of nuts.
[22:30]So basically my mom, you know,
[22:32]like a lot of immigrants believed that getting her children
[22:37]or her children going to, you know,
[22:39]a university like Oxford or Cambridge
[22:41]or the American equivalent half of the Yale Prince
[22:43]and whatever would be the ticket to a better life.
[22:46]That is what as an immigrant,
[22:47]I think a lot of immigrants, you know,
[22:49]have similar beliefs.
[22:51]And in England, it is a classist society,
[22:54]it's a system that is very much based on class.
[22:57]And that sometimes means that it's quite difficult
[23:01]when you're born into a certain situation
[23:03]to be able to move up very rigid in that sense.
[23:07]And so there are only a handful of things
[23:10]that can help you move up in terms of your socio-economic status.
[23:14]And one of those things is going to a very, very good school.
[23:18]if you are an immigrant, especially.
[23:21]So my mother truly believed that as a minority
[23:23]and you're getting into those schools,
[23:25]would change my life.
[23:26]And I think she was on something.
[23:28]I think she was right.
[23:30]I really do.
[23:31]So basically, you know, when I was 13,
[23:34]my mom would put me in the car
[23:35]and she would take me on these trips to visit Oxford.
[23:39]Now, as a 13-year-old, I had no idea what Oxford even was.
[23:42]I barely could pronounce it.
[23:43]I had no idea why it was relevant
[23:44]and why anyone cared about it.
[23:46]But she just wanted me, even at that young age,
[23:48]just to sort of see and sort of smell and experience,
[23:54]those sort of cobbled streets,
[23:57]the beautiful architecture.
[23:59]Again, and it had the similar idea to sort of,
[24:01]past plastic articles on the wall of black success stories.
[24:04]But the idea was just so that I could just gradually start
[24:08]to believe that I could actually one day maybe see myself there.
[24:12]And they became a mother daughter tradition,
[24:14]every sort of maybe five, six months or so.
[24:17]They'd get in the car and we would go in visit Oxford together,
[24:19]like a mother daughter tradition.
[24:22]But when it came time to apply to Oxford,
[24:24]there were a few challenges.
[24:25]Number one, my teachers didn't think
[24:27]that I had the grades to apply to a university like Oxford.
[24:31]My teachers thought, listen, your daughter,
[24:33]so they said to my mom, your daughter is perfectly smart.
[24:37]I was sort of like an A-B student.
[24:39]But they said, you know, she doesn't really have
[24:42]the sort of genius status needed to get into a place
[24:45]like Oxford, you know, you have to be at another level.
[24:48]And they listed up a few other universities and colleges
[24:50]that I should apply for.
[24:51]But my mom coming from Africa had never heard of any of them.
[24:56]What is the university of Edinburgh?
[24:58]What are you talking about?
[25:00]Yeah, she came home and she told me and she said to me,
[25:03]you know what, your teachers don't think you're good enough
[25:05]to apply to Oxford.
[25:06]But you know what, I'm going to figure out if that.
[25:09]And she paced her bedroom thinking, you know,
[25:11]what can I do to guarantee that my daughter's going to go
[25:14]to Oxford University?
[25:15]How can I make that happen?
[25:17]And she came into my room and she was like,
[25:19]oh my God, I've got it.
[25:20]I figured out a plan.
[25:21]I know exactly what to do to guarantee
[25:24]that you are going to go to Oxford University.
[25:26]And I sort of rolled my eyes like what one?
[25:28]And she basically decided that she was going to ban me
[25:31]from watching any television whatsoever
[25:33]until I had an actual Oxford acceptance letter in hand.
[25:37]And of course, I thought she was nuts, you know,
[25:40]but she was very determined because she felt as though
[25:45]going back to the eight hour rule,
[25:46]how a person spends their spare time is critical
[25:50]in terms of what they end up becoming,
[25:52]what they end up doing with their lives.
[25:54]And so, you know, of course,
[25:56]like any sort of teenager I rebelled,
[25:58]I didn't sort of listen.
[25:59]But eventually, you know, without television,
[26:02]I began to spend all my time on the phone.
[26:05]And I would call boys, I would call anyone, you know,
[26:07]if you can't watch TV, what else is that to do?
[26:09]Okay, you know, this is like the year,
[26:11]what is it, 2000 or 99 or whatever.
[26:14]I would call boys, call all my friends on the phone.
[26:16]And then she decided, she realized that I was basically
[26:19]replacing one distraction for another
[26:21]and she said, I'm going to come up with a plan for that too.
[26:23]And one day she came home, it was a Sunday
[26:26]and she came home with what you would call
[26:30]a residential pay phone.
[26:31]I don't know if it exists in America,
[26:33]but in England, you can get these things called
[26:34]residential pay phones.
[26:35]They look like normal phones,
[26:36]but they have a slot on one side for coins.
[26:39]And you can find them in like doctors' offices.
[26:41]And they're not expensive.
[26:42]And she brought home literally a paper
[26:44]and said, I mean, you can use the phone or you want,
[26:46]but you're gonna have to pay for it yourself.
[26:48]And so she completely eliminated all distractions
[26:51]and created an environment
[26:52]whereby I had nothing else to do but study.
[26:55]And of course I rebelled initially,
[26:56]I would do anything but study.
[26:58]So I'd come in from school, I'd go for a walk,
[27:01]I would, you know, have talk, stare out the window,
[27:04]talk to my sister, anything but, but eventually
[27:07]I actually did begin to study.
[27:09]And I began to sort of read around my subjects
[27:11]and open books and read and et cetera.
[27:14]And my grades began to improve.
[27:16]So much so that my French teacher stopped my mom and said
[27:19]to ask about, you know, my stubborn surgeon grades.
[27:22]And my mom explained it was just about eliminating distractions.
[27:24]And my French teacher asked my mother
[27:26]about what to do with her own children.
[27:28]No, ask my mother for advice, you know,
[27:32]which I find so funny.
[27:33]But yeah, I mean, obviously it worked out
[27:35]when I got into Oxford.
[27:36]And the fact is I didn't get in because I'm a genius.
[27:39]I didn't get into Oxford because I'm the smartest girl
[27:41]in the planet.
[27:42]You know, I didn't get in because I was, you know,
[27:45]legacy or that, I got in because my mother created an environment
[27:49]where I literally had nothing else to do to study.
[27:53]That was it.
[27:54]And it was just for two years.
[27:56]And yes, it does sound extreme.
[27:58]But, you know, as a black girl,
[28:00]especially as an immigrant coming from Africa, you know,
[28:02]I was born in London, but my obviously my family's
[28:03]from Nigeria, going to a place like Oxford,
[28:06]especially if you haven't grown up with money,
[28:08]it does change your life.
[28:09]Like it really, really, really changed my entire life.
[28:14]And when I got that acceptance letter,
[28:17]I remember crying to my mother thanking her
[28:21]because even as a sort of teenage, I was only 18,
[28:23]I could literally see that my mother's decision
[28:26]to eliminate distractions had completely changed
[28:29]the trajectory of my entire future.
[28:32]And so I just like was like,
[28:34]oh, thank you so much.
[28:36]And it's such a, for me, I mean, I can't speak anyone else,
[28:38]but for me, it was just such a small price to pay
[28:41]for, you know, living, you know, the life that I have now,
[28:44]which I'm very lucky to be seeing it.
[28:47]So, oh my gosh, yeah.
[28:48]And you've read about that too.
[28:49]I feel like I could talk to you for a hundred hours.
[28:51]I mean, this is like the podcast is not long out.
[28:53]I want to go through every like part of your life
[28:55]that you write about and like discuss it with you
[28:57]and be like, wait, tell me about this.
[28:59]So we'll have to do this in person or something.
[29:00]But yeah, you also really track how you become a CNN anchor
[29:05]and also I loved how you prepared.
[29:08]Like you have this instinct now.
[29:10]Like you know, you need to be ready for things
[29:13]when they fall into your lap, which of course
[29:15]they're never doing.
[29:16]You're like, you're manifesting all of this stuff.
[29:18]And then you're ready.
[29:20]So I'm referring to how you prepared for like this interview
[29:23]that and the man training you was like,
[29:26]you know, you're not gonna be an anchor.
[29:27]No one's gonna ask you to audition for this.
[29:29]And you're like, I'm gonna be ready.
[29:30]I'm gonna be ready no matter what happens.
[29:31]And then of course it happens.
[29:33]And you were ready and you knocked it out of the park.
[29:34]And now look at you.
[29:35]Amazing.
[29:36]It's like, it's just the most inspirational story.
[29:39]Yeah, no, so basically my mother's sort of teaching me
[29:42]to prepare in advance.
[29:44]Like when she went through my syllabus
[29:45]when I was seven years old
[29:47]and she looked at what I was gonna be learning
[29:49]and she taught me ahead of time.
[29:50]So that, you know, by the time I came up in school,
[29:52]I already knew it, that I thought was genius.
[29:54]And I applied that to my adult life as well.
[29:58]So when I got hired at CNN,
[30:00]as a correspondent. Obviously, there was lots of, and I'm a preparation queen, so there's a lot of fun.
[30:06]But I decided that, you know, my mother's lessons about preparing advance had worked wonders to me.
[30:12]You know, and I wondered, you know, whether or not it could even help me when it came to eventually, you know, becoming an anchor, which was a dream of mine.
[30:20]And so even though I don't even see an end for, it was less than a year, several months, but less than a year, I decided that I wanted to start preparing
[30:28]to anchor. And even though there were no anchor positions open, I mean, people don't want to get an anchor position to see an end.
[30:34]You generally don't leave. It's such a great job.
[30:36]And even though no one had asked me to anchor, I decided to find the talent coach in an employees, these talent coaches, you know, full time.
[30:42]And I went to one of them. I said, listen, I would like you to train me to be an anchor and he looked at me weirdly because he was like, you haven't been in the company that long.
[30:49]You have anyone else to anchor. I said, no. And he said, well, you know, why do you want to be trained? There aren't even anchor positions available. And I said, I just want to be trained just in case so good.
[30:59]Just in case one day, you know, an anchor position opens up. I just want to be ready. I'm a firm believer that the issue isn't whether or not your opportunities come.
[31:09]That's the big thing. So he began to train me and, you know, several times a week after work, we would sit in the studio and we would just practice and he would make me study some of the domestic anchor, some of them of course, household names.
[31:27]And, you know, I would look through the scripts and I would study how they asked questions and how to do breaking news and all of that.
[31:34]So, several months later, I found out that CNN international was looking for anchors. And I threw my hat in the ring. And even though they wanted me to sort of audition or have a screen test, you know, in a few weeks or whatever from the time that I found out,
[31:48]I, you know, they were sort of nervous because I obviously didn't have that much time to repair, but what they didn't know is that I'd been preparing for much of that year.
[31:55]So just by being ready and having prepared all those months with that talent coach when the opportunity arose and when there was an anchor position available at CNN international, I got it because I was ready, I prepared.
[32:08]It's so amazing. And we've only like scratched the surface on even more amazing, inspiring tips, tricks, stories, all the Nigerian history.
[32:21]I mean, oh my God, I learned so much. Like, I'm embarrassed. I didn't even know about so I am such a huge fan of this book. I love that I got to know you through this book.
[32:33]And here we are now. And it's just amazing. And everybody has to read where the children take us, how one family achieved the unimaginable. And I can't wait to see you in person in like two weeks.
[32:41]So yes, I'll see you too.
[32:43]City, thank you so much.
[32:44]Thank you.
[32:45]There was no one for to discuss, but anyway.
[32:48]Interview, love job up to. Thank you so much.
[32:51]Thank you.
[32:52]Thank you.
[32:55]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[32:58]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at Zebioans and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[33:03]Also sign up for my newsletter at zebioans.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[33:10]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Textures Sound for the Sound Editing.
[33:14]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.