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EP. 124 Ekiuwa Aire, exploring African history and representation, and influences
17 Plays1 year ago
Join us on this episode of the podcast as we chat with Ekiuwa Aire, founder of Our Ancestories. Ekiuwa shares her experiences growing up in boarding school in Nigeria and how her family, especially her kids, inspired her to write books that represent African history and culture.
She also discusses her biggest influence, Vasti Harrison, and how her work has impacted her own writing. Tune in to learn more about Ekiuwa's journey and the importance of representation in children's literature.
Follow Ekiuwa:
Website: https://our-ancestories.com/en-ca/pages/about
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ancestories/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/our.ancestoriess/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/our_ancestories/
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Transcript
Introduction to 'It's Personal'
00:00:00
Speaker
Okay, all set? Yes, all set. Hey, what's up everyone? Welcome to It's Personal, a podcast about creators and their stories.
00:00:20
Speaker
Welcome back, everyone, to another episode of It's Personal. Today,
Meet Akua Hiram, Our Canadian Guest
00:00:25
Speaker
I have a fellow Canadian guest, which I'm super excited about. Do you mind introducing yourself? Hi, everyone. I'm Akua Hiram. And how are you? We just talked about the weather. And I want to talk about the weather for a second because I am enjoying the weather here in Canada. How have you been?
Embracing Life and Gardening
00:00:43
Speaker
How are things going? What have you been up to?
00:00:46
Speaker
are good. I'm loving the weather. I'm loving the stage in my life where I appreciate the weather so much that I'm actually dabbling at gardening. So when there's sun, I appreciate it because I'm like, oh, my plants get sun and even though it's raining, I'm like, oh, yay, that means I don't have water today. So it's a wind.
00:01:10
Speaker
I love that. And you're I love that. I love that. And you're always I mean, I don't know you personally, but I have been looking a lot at what you've been doing online.
Akua's Writing Journey Begins
00:01:20
Speaker
I know you are kind of as like a writer. So I guess my first question for you is how did that happen for you? How did writing literature become something that you've been so interested in?
00:01:33
Speaker
I've always been interested in writing. When I was in my final year of high school, I drafted a novel with my close friend and it was quite the hit. It was about a family. We were in Nigeria at the time in boarding school and we drafted a
00:01:52
Speaker
a chapter book about a Nigerian family that won the American lottery and each chapter, the entire, what we call a set, or the entire grade and what the greatest but was a final year of high school and everyone in that grade.
00:02:07
Speaker
would read it. It'll go around the entire school and then they'll like, when's the next one? When's the next one? And it was, that was my first book that I published and actually learned how to type by converting that handwritten novel and typing it out. But they lost it somewhere along the line, which is so painful to me.
00:02:26
Speaker
But I fell into writing. I forgot about writing, went to university, started working, and I forgot about writing until I had kids.
Writing with Purpose: Children's Books
00:02:35
Speaker
And I love introducing concepts to my kids when they were much younger as toddlers using children's books. I would introduce them to brushing their teeth properly, handling bullying or loving their hair and their skin color using children's books. And I started to even buy children's books on historical figures like Martin Luther King and Maya Angelou.
00:02:56
Speaker
Albert Einstein and they knew who these were because of these super simplistic books and then I thought why don't I introduce them to historical figures from Africa and use that as a way to not only teach them about African history but as a way to also love where they come from because they come back from school and they say oh I heard that Prince Harry got married and it's a big deal and all of the news is talking about Prince Harry's wedding
00:03:22
Speaker
And I'm in my mind, I'm like, that's great news. It's what media is focusing on. But you do have a history and you have royalty in your lineage as well. And I wanted them to be introduced to them in a way that wasn't like, here you go. This is a workbook for you. So I looked for children's books on
00:03:43
Speaker
African history and I couldn't find any. So I decided to take a stab at writing a true principle. You did such a good job at that. And they're so beautiful as well. And I'm sure your kids and other kids out there are appreciative of what you're doing for the kid lit world. Did you
Educational and Cultural Experiences
00:04:00
Speaker
spend any time in Canada going to school?
00:04:02
Speaker
I did my master's. I came to Canada in my mid 20s to do MBA. I was in Cambridge, British Columbia. So that was my first experience in Canada, studying. Not pre-university level. So how was boarding school in Nigeria at the time?
00:04:21
Speaker
Boarding school is supposed to be in Nigeria, in my opinion. It's supposed to be this curve. Start what we call GSS1. I think I'm still not used to the Canadian. I think GSS1 is your first year of high school, whatever. And that's when you're sort of at the bottom of the barrel.
00:04:40
Speaker
You are subject to whatever the older students ask of you to do. You do your best to just keep it through. If you're lucky, you make friends with older students if you're cute enough and they sort of take you under their wings. But it's a good experience for kids. They become really independent and then when they become, when they get to the higher level, then they can then in turn be like
00:05:02
Speaker
the king of the entire school and get to do the same thing to the younger students, did not experience boarding school as the younger students. I experienced boarding school in my last two years of high school. It was a win-win situation. I got to have fun with my classmates, study, get the experience, but without that, the younger years of, I loved it. It was great for me.
00:05:28
Speaker
That's so nice. And I think my other question is, and I'm assuming you can obviously correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm assuming in Nigeria, all the students look like you. I'm assuming. Yeah. Yeah. So I think that that's something I have never experienced.
Cultural Identity and Belonging
00:05:43
Speaker
I know there's like all black colleges in America. Um, there's not that I know of any all black schools or colleges in Canada that I know of.
00:05:55
Speaker
at least. I'm just so curious of the feeling within the school, within the families, because you had that throughout, I'm assuming, elementary, middle school, and high school.
00:06:08
Speaker
That is a very interesting question and you've touched on something is unique to me and is one of the reasons I actually started writing children's books. I actually did not experience all of my childhood in Nigeria and that's why I didn't experience younger years in boarding school. So I actually at the age of nine moved to the UK and I moved to the UK four years. When I moved from Nigeria to the UK,
00:06:32
Speaker
I know when I was packing up to leave, there was envy in everyone's eyes. I was like, wow, she's so lucky she gets to go live in the UK. And I went to live in the UK, and I think no one actually said it, but I received a message from the universe that I was lucky to be in the UK at the time.
00:06:50
Speaker
But I didn't know when this message, another message also came to me while I was a student or a kid in the UK, but I was a third-class citizen. I don't know how that message came to me. My parents didn't tell me that, but I knew that I wasn't as important as the other kids who didn't have accents or didn't have my skin color or were born in the UK. And I received that message subliminally.
00:07:17
Speaker
towards the end of the four years my parents decided to send me back to Nigeria they had reasons for doing that but I remember thinking oh my god this is the worst thing to ever happen to me and I felt really bad about having to go back
00:07:33
Speaker
to Nigeria. But I went back and within three months in Nigeria, this message came to me again. I was a first class citizen. I loved living in Nigeria. I never wanted to leave Nigeria. I had friends, I had better quality of life. It's just, I just, my confidence just went right back up there.
00:07:51
Speaker
And I realized that there is a benefit to living in a country where everyone looks like you. Diversity is great, but that feeling of not being different, not being othered, especially when that other is looked down upon, it's not a good feeling for kids. And eventually when I decided, I didn't want to leave Nigeria when I was a certain age, but by my mid twenties, I decided to try again another country. And I came to Canada specifically because
00:08:20
Speaker
time Canada was selling that, it was looking for diversity. And I thought, okay, maybe if I went to this country, which at the time, a lot of people were coming to, it'll be more friendly to people who looked like me. And that was why I came to Canada. It was great. Canada has been greater than experience here. So better than the experience I had in the UK. But I also came here extremely confident, extremely sure of who I was around. And so when I had kids here, I started to look at them and I said,
00:08:47
Speaker
I don't want them to, they wouldn't say it cause I didn't say it to my parents and I feel less bad. Um, they wouldn't tell me, I wanted them to somehow feel like they were first-class citizens and they weren't others and that they mattered. And that was one of the reasons I, since I wanted to, without telling them, without affirmations, invite them with concrete proof that you do come from Oregon and you do matter.
The Canadian Experience
00:09:13
Speaker
Um, so yeah, long-graded answer.
00:09:16
Speaker
No, I love, I love that answer. I love listening to you talk about the differences because I didn't know that you had spent time in the UK and your home sounds like a lot of stories that I hear. Like, you know, sometimes for me, the difference would be, yeah, like I, my UK would be like high school.
00:09:33
Speaker
elementary, middle school, and then my community which is like Preston in Nova Scotia is like basically all black. So like I feel like you said it is uncomfortable around everyone that looks like me, people that talk like me, people that understand me, like there's a different level of love and care when you see people around you that look the same.
00:09:55
Speaker
and they get you like right away versus having to you know go into spaces and sometimes not be your full self based on things that have happened in the past based on first impression etc so i totally totally understand what you're saying and i'm happy that you said canada has been good to you because you know there's lots of things about canada that are hard as well
00:10:20
Speaker
right yeah perfect. Nigeria is not perfect. UK wasn't perfect. Canada is not perfect. I'm happy with the decision that I made to come here. It's one of the better decisions that I've made in my life I think.
00:10:33
Speaker
Yeah, I love that. I love hearing that. I want to talk a little bit more about the inspiration for writing and this time more around because you speak a lot about how your inspiration came a lot from like your kids.
Inspiration from Surroundings and Influences
00:10:46
Speaker
Who are some people that have influenced you? That could be like writers, other writers, it could be family members, etc. Interesting. And I think of anyone
00:10:57
Speaker
and I get this question quite a bit but there was no one that was doing what I was doing at the time and even when I started doing what I did when I was interviewing family members the question that I received quite a bit of was why who cares and why you're doing this. I don't know if it sounds vain but there was no one that really influenced me it was just myself I influenced myself and
00:11:25
Speaker
I guess it is what it is. I was, there is an author-illustrator in the States called Vashti Harrison. I absolutely adore the Little People Big Dreams series. I bought her books and her books were, my books were based off of her version of like black history, which was trying to do with black history, and the illustration
00:11:50
Speaker
in her book were gorgeous and so I wanted my books to look like her so I was inspired by her how beautiful her books were and what she was doing with black history. I love that and I think that's I think it's a great answer you don't have to have a specific person or
00:12:08
Speaker
individual that it can be literally just your surroundings, which seemed like a lot of that was like your kids and you watching them grow up in a world where they didn't have access to something that you thought was valuable. That's okay. That's totally okay.
00:12:23
Speaker
That is totally okay. I just have
Connecting with Nature through Family Walks
00:12:26
Speaker
a few more questions for you and I love asking this question because I think it's, I do think it's really important, especially as mom. What are some things you do as a mom with your kids that bring joy? Oh, I love going for walks with my kids. I love it.
00:12:41
Speaker
Because everything else we do, there is some sort of distraction even when we're playing games I have sometimes I get an email and I look at my phone or they could they could be looking at TV, but when we go for walks can't look at my phone, and I'm in that world.
00:12:57
Speaker
the conversations that we have and the discoveries that we make. And typically when I'm on a walk on my own, I love going for walks. I'm listening to music. I don't even pay attention to anything around me. I'm just walking with me. With my kids, I'm not listening to music. And they know these things. They say, oh, mommy, what's this whole doing down here? I'm like, oh, I'm vulnerable. It's past that.
00:13:16
Speaker
But 20,000 times, I've not seen that. They had the conversations that we have invaluable. And as I'm walking, I'm just thinking about the memories that we're creating. And hopefully not going to be here forever. And they have shared this habit that I have of going for walks to decompress with them. And I'm not here. They can go on walks on their own is what I think. Yeah. I love that.
00:13:40
Speaker
I love that as a teacher to teach third grade. I think it's so important that we it's opportunities to just be in nature for number one and away from. I mean, I'm you can ask anyone. I love technology. I love where it's going. I think it's important that kids have access to it.
00:13:57
Speaker
But there is something about like the mundane walking outside, playing on the playground, kicking a ball, exploring a flower, like all those things. You cannot, those experiences like you cannot replace with an iPad. It's just that you just can't do it. So I totally, I love that going for walks and exploring with your kids is something that you enjoy.
00:14:18
Speaker
and implementing as something that the kids can look back on and cherish and hopefully if they decide to have a family when they get older to implement as well. So I think that's such a good answer. That's such a good answer. Thank you. Yeah, it's such a good answer. Where can
Sharing Resources and Online Presence
00:14:35
Speaker
people find you online?
00:14:36
Speaker
can find me on my website, our dash ancestries.com. I'm also active on Instagram and Facebook. That's all in your, I'll just plug for you because I I've looked at your website and it is such a gorgeous website and beyond just like ability or the options of purchasing your books. There's like so many resources for teachers or parents or educators, whoever the
00:15:05
Speaker
Whoever it is, if you're listening, please go and check it out because it is lots of knowledge, lots of years of your knowledge all in one place. Yeah. And I put myself in teacher shoes. Like not everybody knows about African history, but why would I expect a teacher to pick up my book and introduce it to their classroom when one even needs to introduce my book to them? Like my book, I create teacher resources, make it super simple for them to introduce it to their classroom.
00:15:34
Speaker
I love it. I appreciate you. Thank you. That was awesome. That wasn't too bad, right? Oh my god, that was so easy. Yeah, good. I really enjoyed it.