Fresh Air Interview: Zain Asher, family book club

I heard an interview on Public Radio last weekend. Zain Asher, a CNN international anchor was interviewed about growing up in London. She was born in London, but her parents were immigrants from Nigeria. She talked about what her widowed mother did an an effort to help her children become successful.

When Zain was about 6 years old, her older brother was expelled from school and started spending time with the wrong crowd. 

Her mother started a family book club to get him back on track.

Here is a transcript of that portion of the interview. To hear or read the transcript of the entire conversation, go to the Fresh Air page here.

DAVIES: What rules did she make for the family?

ASHER: Oh, my gosh, so many. And she started the rules at that point, but they continued throughout the end of my high school. The first rule was a family book club because her main goal at that point was to keep Binze on track. As I mentioned, he'd been expelled from school.

DAVIES: That's your oldest brother, yeah.

ASHER: That's my oldest brother. And he was, you know, hanging out with the wrong crowds and, you know, he was going off the rails. And so one of the first rules she instilled was a family book club. So that meant that my brothers, especially because they were older - I was only 5 going on 6 years old. My brothers especially would be assigned to read one book a week and discuss it around the dinner table. And the discussions would usually take place on Fridays. But it was so powerful for us because it just gave us something to focus on besides loss and besides pain, for example. And my mother was a Nigerian Black, obviously, immigrant woman, single mother now, a widow, raising three Black children in a neighborhood that had a lot of problems. And so she really needed to roll up her sleeves, she felt, to keep us on track and to keep us focused.

DAVIES: Yeah. You know, one of the things I love about this part of the story is you say that, you know, while she was an educated person in Nigeria, she didn't have a lot of background in literature. So she starts going to the library and just asking the librarian, you know, what are some classics that we should all read - and taking this on herself so that she is prepared to participate, in addition, of course, to holding on a full-time job and making sure everyone is fed and and she's pregnant with your soon-to-arrive sister. It's pretty remarkable.