Taiwo Akinola for the GUERNICA

Ask yourself; “What did you do today?”

As we wrap up this week’s focus on literature within families, I am ending with one last interview for the GUERNICA Magazine. I believe there is no better way to end the week than with Taiwo Akinola, an accomplished screenwriter, whose literary journey began with a simple yet difficult question from her mother; “what did you do today?”

 Akinola is actually no stranger. When our editors decided to include interviews where families had been significant influences on a person’s literary background, I knew just the right person to ask. Back in college, I had read one of my peer’s essays and had always been curious to get to know more about the relationship between Taiwo and her mother’s story. After some phone calls and emails, Taiwo and I finally found ourselves at a local coffee shop around the corner from our old college. The encounter was memorable and as the conversation flowed with ease, I felt some of my own pending questions be finally answered. 

Taiwo Akinola’s core memories are within the public library, a place she used to visit frequently as it was her parents’ wish for her and her brothers to integrate literature in their lives. Taiwo admitted to me just how “illicit fight clubs” ( fight clubs run by the Akinola children) had occurred outside the library and reading a book was the last thing on their mind. I appreciated Taiwo giving me a picture of who she was and what her surroundings looked like before really getting into why literature has shaped her into the person she is today. When she reminisced on her past her storytelling was in chronological order making my job as the reporter much easier to follow. At first I was worried our conversation was swaying away from the main idea of the story, but what Taiwo was doing was creating a stronger contrast between an older version of herself and the version she was in the present.  An effective strategy making me, the reporter feel as if I were replaying the events with her in the order they happened.  

As Taiwo continued with her story, it was easy to see how her mother was a strong influence to her discipline with reading and her question “what did you do today? ” demanded an answer every single day. In Taiwo’s writing, her mother’s question is used as the title and and repeated throughout the text, to highlight the importance of its role in Taiwo’s life. I found it to be a clever strategy of Taiwo, to create a similar experience for the reader to what she had always heard as a kid. The repetition of the question in her essay stuck with me, so naturally, the question also found itself within my recent interview with Taiwo. “She always wanted us to read like if you weren’t reading then you didn’t do anything… you could have run the equivalent of a marathon and if she came home and she asked you what did you do today and there wasn’t a book involved, then she’d be like, okay, so you didn’t do anything today.” 

My interview with Taiwo made her story and her mother come to life. Before my questions had even been asked, I knew there was much to be said and so I carefully had to choose which questions had nagged at me all these years since I last saw her. I asked Taiwo about her mother’s own reading journey as a kid. We found ourselves sharing similarities between her mother and my own. As a listener I could completely understand, and I heard emotion every time she shared her mother’s history. Though Taiwo’s text does not focus on describing her mother, I had always felt a huge sense of love for her from Taiwo. Only in an interview would I have gotten the chance to hear how Taiwo emphasized, “my mother was a reader. Like I wish I could show you her bookshelf.” I couldn’t help but remember the books in my own household and therefore had a good understanding of what those books might have meant to Taiwo’s mother. She went on to compare herself as the opposite of the quick reader her mother was, a skill only acquired when the muscle is given practice. Taiwo also painted the family picture for me. “My grandfather was a teacher like in Nigeria…and then an English teacher too. So literacy is big in their household. They read a lot. She read a lot and we read a lot too.”

As we’ve come to a close on this week’s profile with a glimpse into the life of Taiwo Akinola, whom we can sympathize with and learn from and get a better understanding of the way families may influence and could be key factors in our development. These are the kinds of stories that create questions in us. What did we do today and why did we do it? What significance did it play in our lives? I ended our interview by asking Taiwo, if literature would be present in a professional career in the future. Taiwo’s response,“My major is film studies. So it involves a lot of writing, a lot of reading and writing.” Taiwo recognizes that her exposure to literature has prepared her to face any current and future obstacles in her career. So I hope you, the reader, learn to ask yourself “what did you do today?” as Taiwo’s mother had, and take the time to reflect on what tools your family has instilled in you that have aided in your growth. I end this article with a brief recording from my conversation with Taiwo about her mothers story. 

Link to audio