Please join us for this in-person Book Talk presentation
with our special guests
Zain Asher
Author of Where the Children Take Us
Dr. Uzodinma Iweala (moderator)
Chief Executive Officer, The Africa Center
Award-winning writer, filmmaker, and medical doctor
with an introductory welcome by
H.E. Ambassador Tijjani Muhammad-Bande
Permanent Representative of Nigeria to the United Nations
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Thursday | 16 March 2023 | 6:00 to 7:30 p.m.
The Nigerian Mission to the UN
828 Second Avenue at 44th Street
New York, NY 10017
General Admission: $15
(Admission cost can be applied towards the purchase of the book, which will be available at the venue)
There will be a food and wine reception, plus book signing, following the talk
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Registration for this event is closed
For any questions about this event, please contact Executive Director Ann Nicol at anicol@unanyc.org
In commemoration of International Women’s Day (March 6) and in celebration of the 2023 Conference on the Status of Women (CSW) taking place at the United Nations (6–17 March), we are pleased to host CNN International anchor Zain Asher, who will discuss her inspirational memoir Where the Children Take Us, and offer a vision of how relentless hard work led her family to success.
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.
Please join us for this special evening with Zain Asher, who will be joined by award-winning writer, filmmaker, and medical doctor Uzodinma Iweala, who is also Chief Executive Officer of The Africa Center in New York City. Also appearing to deliver an opening welcome is H.E. Ambassador Tijjani Muhammad-Bande, the Permanent Representative of Nigeria to the United Nations.
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Note: readers who wish to attend can purchase their own advance copy of the book here
ZAIN ASHER
Zain Asher is an anchor for CNN International based in New York. She anchors the global news program One World with Zain Asher where she covers top international stories for the network.
She recently released her memoir Where the Children Take Us, which she wrote as a tribute to her mother who raised her and her siblings alone after her father was killed in a tragic accident.
Asher was born and raised in London to Nigerian immigrant parents. A graduate of both Oxford University and Columbia University, she is currently the anchor of One World with Zain Asher on CNN International.
She lives in New York City with her husband and two sons.
Dr. Uzodinma Iweala
Uzodinma Iweala is an award-winning writer, filmmaker, and medical doctor. As the CEO of The Africa Center, he is dedicated to promoting new narratives about Africa and its Diaspora.
Uzodinma was the CEO, Editor-In-Chief, and co-Founder of Ventures Africa magazine, a publication that covers the evolving business, policy, culture, and innovation spaces in Africa. As a book author, his titles include Beasts of No Nation, a novel released in 2005 to critical acclaim and adapted into a major motion picture; Our Kind of People, a non-fiction account of HIV/AIDS in Nigeria released in 2012; and Speak No Evil (2018), a novel about a queer first-generation Nigerian-American teen living in Washington, D.C. His short stories and essays have appeared in numerous publications like The New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, and The Paris Review among others.
Uzodinma was also the founding CEO of the Private Sector Health Alliance of Nigeria, an organization that promotes private sector investment in health services and health innovation in Nigeria. He sits on the boards of the Sundance Institute, The International Rescue Committee, and the African Development Bank’s Presidential Youth Advisory Group.
A graduate of Harvard University and the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and a Fellow of The Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University, he lives in Brooklyn, New York.
His Excellency Tijjani Muhammad-Bande
On June 4 2019, the United Nations General Assembly elected the Permanent Representative of Nigeria to the United Nations His Excellency Tijjani Muhammad-Bande as President of the 74th session.
Ambassador Tijjani Muhammad-Bande has had an outstanding career as a scholar and diplomat. He started his academic career at Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Nigeria, rising from Graduate Assistant in 1980 to full Professor in 1998, to Vice-Chancellor, in 2004. Between 2000 and 2004, Professor Muhammad-Bande served as Director-General of Le Centre Africain de Formation et de Recherche Administratives pour le Développement (CAFRAD), in Tangiers, Morocco. From 2010 to 2016, he held the position of Director- General of the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies.
As Nigeria’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations (2018-2019), he served as Vice-President of the 71st session of the General Assembly and was active in several forums, including the Special Committee on Peacekeeping Operations (C34), the Advisory Board of the United Nations Counter- Terrorism Centre, and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Group. Professor Muhammad-Bande was an assessor for the National Merit Award and most notably was named Officer of the Order of the Federal Republic, one of Nigeria’s highest national honours.
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