Getting the motherhood story

CNN's Zain E. Asher recounts how her mom endured war, emigration and widowhood to enable her kids' success

Obiajulu Ejiofor did not have an easy life. As a teen, she had barely survived the Nigerian Civil War; then after emigrating to London, she felt isolated and was stung consistently by racism.

But she was fulfilled and happy. She was a mother of three, with a fourth on the way; she and her husband, Arinze, owned a pharmacy, and he was also a doctor and aspiring musician, the lifeblood of every room he was in. Theirs was a love story for the ages.

Then, suddenly, Arinze was gone, killed instantly in a traffic accident in Nigeria, one that nearly killed their second child, Chiwetel. Depressed and despairing, Ejiofor retreated at first before realizing it was up to her to make sure her children's lives weren't totally derailed by this tragedy.

In “Where the Children Take Us,” Zain E. Asher, who was 5 when her father died, recounts her mother's journey and how she shaped her children — the eldest, Obinze, is now an entrepreneur; Chiwetel is an Oscar- and Emmy-nominated actor; Asher anchors CNN's “One World”; and the youngest, Kandibe, is a doctor. To get them there, Asher's mother surrounded them with images of Black success and would drive her daughter to Oxford regularly so she could envision herself there; she also cut the wires on the family TV and replaced the home phone with a pay phone to prevent the teenage Asher from being distracted from her studies.

Asher spoke recently by video about getting her mother to relive her worst trauma and about what it's like to always feel like an outsider. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q What made you decide to write a memoir centered on your mother instead of you?

A I hadn't really thought about writing a memoir until I turned 36, the age my mother was when my father passed away. It really haunted me because I realized just how young she was then. I had my first kid at that time, and while I'd always appreciated my mother — even as a teenager I knew she was a remarkable human being — it was when I became a mother myself that I realized what she had gone through. So I wanted to celebrate all that she did.

Q Your mom was willing to relive all of this and put her whole story out there?

A When I first told my mother I wanted to write a book about her, she said, “Why? I've done nothing special.”

But when she read it, she was moved. Her life then was all about survival, emotional and physical, so she never had a chance to step back and think about the meaning of her experiences and also how it might affect people reading it.

The first chapter was very difficult to write because my mother had buried a lot of the trauma she went through at that time — she was from Nigeria and an immigrant, so she didn't go to grief counseling or anything. When I interviewed her, it brought up a lot of the trauma, and my mother had to set time limits on our conversations because it was too painful. For that chapter, I only got to interview her 10 minutes at a time. And we'd have to take a break till the next day or a few days later.

Q How did writing the book impact you?

A I was quite traumatized by him dying — until very recently I couldn't really bring up my father without crying. But I didn't really know my father. I feel as if I've been trying to find my dad my whole life, and through this book I finally found him. Writing it, I realized just how special a person my dad was — my mom's brother told me he entirely modeled himself on my dad. So I did a lot more crying while writing the book, but now I can talk about him without crying because there's closure. I feel like I know him now.