In this spellbinding memoir, popular CNN anchor Zain E. Asher pays tribute to
her mother’s strength and determination to raise four successful children in
the shadow of tragedy. Awaiting the return of her husband and young son from a
road trip, Obiajulu Ejiofor receives shattering news. There’s been a fatal car
crash, and one of them is dead. In Where the Children Take Us, Obiajulu’s
daughter, Zain E. Asher, tells the story of her mother’s harrowing fight to
raise four children as a widowed immigrant in South London. There is tragedy
in this tale, but it is not a tragedy. Drawing on tough-love parenting
strategies, Obiajulu teaches her sons and daughters to overcome the daily
pressures of poverty, crime and prejudice—and much more. With her relentless
support, the children exceed all expectations—becoming a CNN anchor, an Oscar-
nominated actor—Asher’s older brother Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave)—a
medical doctor, and a thriving entrepreneur. The generations-old Nigerian
parenting techniques that lead to the family's salvation were born in the
village where young Obiajulu and Arinze meet with their country on the brink
of war. Together, they emigrate to London in the 1970s to escape the violence,
but soon confront a different set of challenges in the West. When grief
threatens to engulf her fractured family after the accident, Obiajulu,
suddenly a single mother in a foreign land, refuses to accept defeat. As her
children veer down the wrong path, she instills a family book club with
Western literary classics, testing their resolve and challenging their deeper
understanding. Desperate for inspiration, she plasters newspaper clippings of
Black success stories on the walls and hunts for overachieving neighbors to
serve as role models, all while running Shakespeare theatre lines with her son
and finishing homework into the early morning with Zain. When distractions
persist, she literally cuts the TV cord and installs a residential pay
phone.The story of a woman who survived genocide, famine, poverty, and
crushing grief to rise from war torn Africa to the streets of South London and
eventually the drawing rooms of Buckingham Palace, Where the Children Take Us
is an unforgettable portrait of strength, tenacity, love, and perseverance
embodied in one towering woman. Read more