Where the Children Take Us

How One Family Achieved the Unimaginable

By: Zain E. Asher

Narrated by: Zain E. Asher

Length: 6 hrs and 19 mins

Publisher's summary

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.

©2022 Zain Asher (P)2022 HarperCollins Publishers

Hard work really paid off

I enjoy this book. It gave me ideas of how to get my children to study but most of all it showed love, loss and determination in the face of adversity. I love this family story from rags to the success in every sense of the word.

Thank you Zain E Asher!

Thank you, Zain Asher for sharing the story of your family’s incredibly compelling journey through deep loss to extraordinary triumph! I could not stop reading from the first sentence to the last! Your telling of your parents beautiful love story and your mother’s exceptional strength and determination to uplift her children after the tragic loss of their father is truly awe-inspiring. I’m so grateful to her and to your entire family for allowing their story to be shared with the world!

Wow! So powerful

I’m just blown away by this book. Such a heart wrenching, heartwarming, and absorbing story.

A different way to raise children

Inspiring and unconventional ideas on raising children. Speaks to the value of a challenge and the different outcomes that can develop.

This Book is a Treasure

I cannot put into words how this book has truly captured my heart. Zain Asher is an amazing author and her story through the eyes of her mom is one of triumph after overcoming immeasurable hardships and pain. I am speechless as I complete this book. This is a must read memoir- you will be captivated from the onset of this book. I am recommending it to everyone I know.

Outstanding!

A family memoir of love, hard work, tragedy and triumph that engages the reader/listener in so many ways. Highly recommended.

I am truly in AWE!

I have had books that I've struggled to finish. This is one I couldn't put down. I listened to it every spare moment I had. I will be forever grateful for the lessons shared. Thank you for being so raw when sharing your story. Thank you for writing it and adhering it with the rest of us! May God bless you and yours always until your life book comes to an end. Until then may you continue to live your BEST DESERVED LIFE!

Interesting

I enjoyed learning about Nigeria and immigration wrapped in the power of a mother’s love.

Thank you for sharing your story.

Resilience. Persistence. Determination.

I loved all of it. Couldn’t put it down for a few minutes. I was captivated from start to finish…

Unanimously loved in Book Club

Zain’s story is one that every mother/child or family should read. My daughter had read this independently and I believe it gave her a greater appreciation of those “rules” that may seem arbitrary at the time. We grew closer as a result of our discussions about her journey. This book is inspirational and extremely well written.