August 5, 2025 • 21 mins
On this episode of Authors Corner, Kate Delaney talks with Dr. John Ayoola Akinyemi about his deeply personal book Meet My Mother.... The post Meet My Mother appeared first on WebTalkRadio.net.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello, book lovers, and welcome to Author's Corner. Get ready
for a whirlwind tour of the latest and greatest reads
and the fascinating stories behind them. Join us as we
chat with authors and newsmakers from all over the world,
diving into their journeys and creative processes. And now here's
the host of Author's Corner, the Emmy Award winning Kate Delady.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
I'm so excited to introduce you to doctor John Akayemi.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
He's with us with his smiling face.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Behind him is a picture of his beautiful wife, Agnes.
Will talk about his family and the name of his
book is one I bet all of our mothers would
love for us to have written.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
It's called Meet My Mother, Portrait.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Of my Quintessential, My quintessential consonman and.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
I love that word. He's got the book in his hand.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Mother so wait to hear the stories of his mother
and the impact that she had and just such an
interesting life. John, thanks so much for coming on with.
Speaker 4 (01:02):
Us, my pleasure.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Let's talk about your book. What made you decide to
write this book?
Speaker 4 (01:09):
I decided to write this book two weeks in advance
of the last Mother's Day, I said of her and
I said, wouldn't it be nice if I can commemorate
a book in her name to honor all the mothers
(01:31):
across the globe, because I know for a fact that
a mother's duties in the home, in the family is
never finished. It's a love affair that almost parallels a
(01:55):
divine love that the Good Lord decides that all couples
should have My mother. When I look back, I give
her all the glory. I give God the glory, of course,
and I gave her all the honor for the way
(02:19):
she brought all nine of us and one in the middle.
I have four older siblings and four younger siblings. A
case in point was the fact that I recall, growing
up in Nigeria, West Africa as a young child, how
she not sured us, how she built the foundation for
(02:43):
our lives. Each day started with a morning devotion in
the family, and all nine of us we had a
family Bible. She had her own, my father had his own,
and we have one for the siblings. She would a
partially a part of the verse in the Bible for
(03:04):
us to read, and each one of us, from the
oldest command to the youngest, we would read a verse
and cousin into the most sibling. Now that I recall
my experience, I wondered how much I really valued that
(03:24):
I was about seven, as I had recalled, and what
does somebody all know? I was bored with the ritual
of having to wake up for all lady the marray,
I've been reading a bear from my next older brother,
who was a person to be the bell boy. It
would bring the bell and all of us who come
to the living room where we'll have the devotion, and
(03:48):
my mother would interpret each lesson that we were supposed
to get from that devotion. And I just wondered, that
is the foundation that is the pillar of my life today.
And now I credit half for building my life on
(04:10):
a piece of rock. And that is what I just
glorified God for she, like my father, was an education
educator by training, so she aspired to the rank of
being the principal of a Methodist elementary girls school, and
(04:34):
my father, my father, likewise became the principal of the
boys' school. When I look back at the foundation of
my life, I just rejoice sours about day not show
us to know whose sons or daughters we are. She
(04:59):
and my father imposed upon us the idea of knowing
who you are. I want to know who you are.
You have established the rock for the foundation as the
drop for whatever I'm building, so to speak, comes on
top of that. So my quintessential mother, as I recall,
(05:26):
I was about ten years old when she went in
one of those Methodist synods it's like a meeting of
leaders in the Methodist churches of Nigeria. She took me
along with her and she made me have a commitment.
(05:49):
He said, John, I am taking you on this synod
of meetings. However, I want you to write an essay
on your experiences. So I recall after this scener it
was a four day meeting one of the largest cities
(06:11):
in Nigeria called it bad I came back and she
asked me for my essay, which I wrote. So she
was my very first teacher. All over that were read
dramatical errors of that. Wow. Well, anyway, I think, oh,
(06:35):
I should silence this.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
People understand that new silence the vhote. It was funny.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
We heard a rocky theme and I thought, you know what,
your mother coming through to us and telling us and
reaching out, Hey, you're talking about me.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
I feel her spirit. Oh, thank you you say so.
Speaker 4 (06:55):
Anyway, she was my first teacher, and I think for
mothers in in in the world, I need to emphasize
the idea that mothers parents in particular, uh the rock
educators of their family members. Later on, two decades or
(07:21):
so later, when I was an a student at Aurora College,
which has not become a rural university, I was lucky
enough to have a mentor I still remember her name, doctor,
and then just momentarily escaped me. But she was a
(07:43):
female professor who encouraged me. I took her a course
in creative writing, and creative writing course really brought the
very best out of every student. It was more like
she's typhoning out the creative spirit in each of us.
(08:05):
Apparently she recognized that I have this dormant emotion. She
encouraged me, and in that year that was nineteen sixty five,
I remember so well, she encouraged me to submit some
kind of competition to the National Anthology of College Poetry
(08:31):
at the time, and lo and behold, the little poems
that I wrote were published. So that was my very
first introduction to the publishing field. And of course, later
in my scientific and devil I had to write a
thesis for the master's degree and the dissertation for the PhD.
(08:53):
But after all these creative things that the good lad
has enabled me to do, the most important one was
is the writing of books in my retirement years. Every
time I feel like expressing my joy, expressing my frustration,
(09:21):
sometimes expressing a deep feeling, I just get a piece
of paper, get my computer and put the thoughts down.
So the idea of writing this book was really conceived
two weeks before the last Mother's Day, and I made
a deal with my publisher, said do you think you
(09:44):
can publish this just in time for Mother's Day? Of
course I didn't meet that deadline. But the memories of
my mother are saw in Debt, and all my siblings Africa,
and we are scattered all over. We're in Europe and
(10:04):
South Africa, of course in Canada and of course here.
All of them are just so enumored that John is
able to write about me, my mother, who of course
(10:25):
was me, their grandmother, their great grandmother, and so on
and so forth, because I'm blessed enough to have written
another book called Belongings. Belongings is a history, a genealogy
(10:47):
of the Ka and the family tracing back all the
way from eighteen forty eight, that six generations. I was
able to praise the effort for this. I give the
credit to my oldest niece, missus Grace or like Jim
(11:10):
okay me of course a ki and who did all
the work from my mother's collection at home. My mother
was a meticulous note taken. She kept record of the
birthdays of each member of the family. So my niece
(11:32):
was able to dig into this family bible that she
kept in which he noted all the family birthdays and
so on and so forth, and shared it with me.
So with her cooperation, with her encouragement, and of course
the encournment of all my cousins and nephews and family members,
I was able to write this genealogy which is called Belonging.
(11:56):
And I tell you a little story about why I
chose that title.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
Let's hear it.
Speaker 4 (12:01):
I figure out that we Homo sapiens, human beings truly,
truly would belong to one another. I figured that I
am where I am today because I am standing on
the shoulders of three people that preceded that came before me.
(12:29):
I figured, if I wrote something that shows this family
human relationships, we belong to one another. We belong to
each other. It's a fresh seeing what is going on
(12:51):
in today's world when the leadership of this great country
is encouraging coalition the two different groups for some ungodly purpose.
I figure if I wrote a book that shows that
(13:15):
we humans, we truly are each other's keepers, that the
world would be a better place.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
Wow, what a great sentiment.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
When people read either one of these books, both of
these books, I hope they get them.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
What do you hope they take away.
Speaker 4 (13:35):
From my meet my mother? I hope they take away
the incredible legacies that mothers throughout the world lead to
their families and children if the mother does it right.
(14:03):
I figure that I hope that people would take the
idea home to know that persistence, love, caring, all these
things that a mother shows to her children are really
(14:29):
the foundation the groups of our advancement as human beings.
I suffer deeply in my mind when I read stories
of some mothers who, for one reason or the other,
(14:54):
decide not to give their consumate love to their family
or to their children. I feel hurt when I see
a young mother with two children shopping at cam Up,
shopping at at Walmart. I'm not saying a father to
(15:18):
accompany them. I know that I cannot impose upon them
my own values, but it would be so much better
when I see and I'll tell you a little story
that demons say what I'm trying to say. When I
see a photo or a scene with a mother and
(15:49):
a father, show this connection, this connectivity, this law a
causain point. I was shopping at Costco the other day
and I saw two couples, a man and a woman
holding hands, and something told me. I said, I like that.
(16:13):
Then I said what I said, when I grew up,
I'm going to learn how to hold my spouses hands.
Both of us laughed. When I say that, it's a
visual body language that demonstrates what love is, what caring is.
(16:38):
I always marvel a gentleman who take their hat when
they see a lady who opened the door of the
car for their lady. This is just awesome to me,
and it just tells me this is a little practice.
You don't need to have a PhD to that. It's
(17:01):
just a little practice knowing that whoever you are wish
means so much to you. My mother demonstrates all her
life that we her nine children mean so much to her.
As a matter of fact, when my father died, and
(17:21):
he died rather young, fifty one years young, he was
an excellent health. However, at that time I'm talking about
nineteen fifty six, there was no medical care for asthma. Reportedly,
he probably died of an asthmatic attack, again putting it
(17:45):
back in the years nineteen fifty six when there was
no care for that. So I'm hoping that readers will
know that we a society sometimes who don't give enough credits,
(18:07):
enough credits to mothers who sacrificed everything just to make
sure that we the children become somebody without me. And
again a little side story about this I knew at earlier,
(18:29):
but I have far older and far younger siblings. When
I look back at my parents on their way of
handling family planning, I said to myself, Oh, my goodness,
I am so glad my parents did not stop at
(18:54):
just having three or four children, Otherwise I would not
be alive today and the fifth of life. Wow, and
these times in a love intricate way with my beautiful
wife in the earlier years of I had dated, she
(19:15):
remarked to me, at what time he said, whoever I
married must agree to her ten children with me. I
smiled and I said to her, I guess that rules
me out of it. So later in life, as I
(19:39):
was thinking, I became new wises, I wondered what might
have been in her mind when she said that. And
no one, behold it don't on me. You know, it's
been said that parents read their children the way these
parents themselves were real. So later I found out that
(20:04):
Ednes has ten siblings, including herself. Wow, it was her
father and her mother. No multiple wives now, just husband
and wife and ten children. So I figured that maybe
at that moment when she said that, she was saying,
if I can't break my parents' record, at least I
(20:27):
must need it. And it's so funny too that myny
myself and for some reason I'm in the middle, so
I have a total of eight siblings. So I figure, oh,
my lord, this is this is this is a wonderful
coincidence in terms of family numbering system. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Wow, I mean, your stories are beautiful, and there's so
many more stories and prayers and things that happened to
you during your life, and so much of that again
the rock, as you said, your mother meet my Mother
is a wonderful gift belongings another book worthy of people going.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
To get doctor John. We could talk to you forever.
Thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 4 (21:13):
Yes, God bless
Hello, book lovers, and welcome to Author's Corner. Get ready
for a whirlwind tour of the latest and greatest reads
and the fascinating stories behind them. Join us as we
chat with authors and newsmakers from all over the world,
diving into their journeys and creative processes. And now here's
the host of Author's Corner, the Emmy Award winning Kate Delady.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
I'm so excited to introduce you to doctor John Akayemi.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
He's with us with his smiling face.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Behind him is a picture of his beautiful wife, Agnes.
Will talk about his family and the name of his
book is one I bet all of our mothers would
love for us to have written.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
It's called Meet My Mother, Portrait.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Of my Quintessential, My quintessential consonman and.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
I love that word. He's got the book in his hand.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Mother so wait to hear the stories of his mother
and the impact that she had and just such an
interesting life. John, thanks so much for coming on with.
Speaker 4 (01:02):
Us, my pleasure.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Let's talk about your book. What made you decide to
write this book?
Speaker 4 (01:09):
I decided to write this book two weeks in advance
of the last Mother's Day, I said of her and
I said, wouldn't it be nice if I can commemorate
a book in her name to honor all the mothers
(01:31):
across the globe, because I know for a fact that
a mother's duties in the home, in the family is
never finished. It's a love affair that almost parallels a
(01:55):
divine love that the Good Lord decides that all couples
should have My mother. When I look back, I give
her all the glory. I give God the glory, of course,
and I gave her all the honor for the way
(02:19):
she brought all nine of us and one in the middle.
I have four older siblings and four younger siblings. A
case in point was the fact that I recall, growing
up in Nigeria, West Africa as a young child, how
she not sured us, how she built the foundation for
(02:43):
our lives. Each day started with a morning devotion in
the family, and all nine of us we had a
family Bible. She had her own, my father had his own,
and we have one for the siblings. She would a
partially a part of the verse in the Bible for
(03:04):
us to read, and each one of us, from the
oldest command to the youngest, we would read a verse
and cousin into the most sibling. Now that I recall
my experience, I wondered how much I really valued that
(03:24):
I was about seven, as I had recalled, and what
does somebody all know? I was bored with the ritual
of having to wake up for all lady the marray,
I've been reading a bear from my next older brother,
who was a person to be the bell boy. It
would bring the bell and all of us who come
to the living room where we'll have the devotion, and
(03:48):
my mother would interpret each lesson that we were supposed
to get from that devotion. And I just wondered, that
is the foundation that is the pillar of my life today.
And now I credit half for building my life on
(04:10):
a piece of rock. And that is what I just
glorified God for she, like my father, was an education
educator by training, so she aspired to the rank of
being the principal of a Methodist elementary girls school, and
(04:34):
my father, my father, likewise became the principal of the
boys' school. When I look back at the foundation of
my life, I just rejoice sours about day not show
us to know whose sons or daughters we are. She
(04:59):
and my father imposed upon us the idea of knowing
who you are. I want to know who you are.
You have established the rock for the foundation as the
drop for whatever I'm building, so to speak, comes on
top of that. So my quintessential mother, as I recall,
(05:26):
I was about ten years old when she went in
one of those Methodist synods it's like a meeting of
leaders in the Methodist churches of Nigeria. She took me
along with her and she made me have a commitment.
(05:49):
He said, John, I am taking you on this synod
of meetings. However, I want you to write an essay
on your experiences. So I recall after this scener it
was a four day meeting one of the largest cities
(06:11):
in Nigeria called it bad I came back and she
asked me for my essay, which I wrote. So she
was my very first teacher. All over that were read
dramatical errors of that. Wow. Well, anyway, I think, oh,
(06:35):
I should silence this.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
People understand that new silence the vhote. It was funny.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
We heard a rocky theme and I thought, you know what,
your mother coming through to us and telling us and
reaching out, Hey, you're talking about me.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
I feel her spirit. Oh, thank you you say so.
Speaker 4 (06:55):
Anyway, she was my first teacher, and I think for
mothers in in in the world, I need to emphasize
the idea that mothers parents in particular, uh the rock
educators of their family members. Later on, two decades or
(07:21):
so later, when I was an a student at Aurora College,
which has not become a rural university, I was lucky
enough to have a mentor I still remember her name, doctor,
and then just momentarily escaped me. But she was a
(07:43):
female professor who encouraged me. I took her a course
in creative writing, and creative writing course really brought the
very best out of every student. It was more like
she's typhoning out the creative spirit in each of us.
(08:05):
Apparently she recognized that I have this dormant emotion. She
encouraged me, and in that year that was nineteen sixty five,
I remember so well, she encouraged me to submit some
kind of competition to the National Anthology of College Poetry
(08:31):
at the time, and lo and behold, the little poems
that I wrote were published. So that was my very
first introduction to the publishing field. And of course, later
in my scientific and devil I had to write a
thesis for the master's degree and the dissertation for the PhD.
(08:53):
But after all these creative things that the good lad
has enabled me to do, the most important one was
is the writing of books in my retirement years. Every
time I feel like expressing my joy, expressing my frustration,
(09:21):
sometimes expressing a deep feeling, I just get a piece
of paper, get my computer and put the thoughts down.
So the idea of writing this book was really conceived
two weeks before the last Mother's Day, and I made
a deal with my publisher, said do you think you
(09:44):
can publish this just in time for Mother's Day? Of
course I didn't meet that deadline. But the memories of
my mother are saw in Debt, and all my siblings Africa,
and we are scattered all over. We're in Europe and
(10:04):
South Africa, of course in Canada and of course here.
All of them are just so enumored that John is
able to write about me, my mother, who of course
(10:25):
was me, their grandmother, their great grandmother, and so on
and so forth, because I'm blessed enough to have written
another book called Belongings. Belongings is a history, a genealogy
(10:47):
of the Ka and the family tracing back all the
way from eighteen forty eight, that six generations. I was
able to praise the effort for this. I give the
credit to my oldest niece, missus Grace or like Jim
(11:10):
okay me of course a ki and who did all
the work from my mother's collection at home. My mother
was a meticulous note taken. She kept record of the
birthdays of each member of the family. So my niece
(11:32):
was able to dig into this family bible that she
kept in which he noted all the family birthdays and
so on and so forth, and shared it with me.
So with her cooperation, with her encouragement, and of course
the encournment of all my cousins and nephews and family members,
I was able to write this genealogy which is called Belonging.
(11:56):
And I tell you a little story about why I
chose that title.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
Let's hear it.
Speaker 4 (12:01):
I figure out that we Homo sapiens, human beings truly,
truly would belong to one another. I figured that I
am where I am today because I am standing on
the shoulders of three people that preceded that came before me.
(12:29):
I figured, if I wrote something that shows this family
human relationships, we belong to one another. We belong to
each other. It's a fresh seeing what is going on
(12:51):
in today's world when the leadership of this great country
is encouraging coalition the two different groups for some ungodly purpose.
I figure if I wrote a book that shows that
(13:15):
we humans, we truly are each other's keepers, that the
world would be a better place.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
Wow, what a great sentiment.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
When people read either one of these books, both of
these books, I hope they get them.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
What do you hope they take away.
Speaker 4 (13:35):
From my meet my mother? I hope they take away
the incredible legacies that mothers throughout the world lead to
their families and children if the mother does it right.
(14:03):
I figure that I hope that people would take the
idea home to know that persistence, love, caring, all these
things that a mother shows to her children are really
(14:29):
the foundation the groups of our advancement as human beings.
I suffer deeply in my mind when I read stories
of some mothers who, for one reason or the other,
(14:54):
decide not to give their consumate love to their family
or to their children. I feel hurt when I see
a young mother with two children shopping at cam Up,
shopping at at Walmart. I'm not saying a father to
(15:18):
accompany them. I know that I cannot impose upon them
my own values, but it would be so much better
when I see and I'll tell you a little story
that demons say what I'm trying to say. When I
see a photo or a scene with a mother and
(15:49):
a father, show this connection, this connectivity, this law a
causain point. I was shopping at Costco the other day
and I saw two couples, a man and a woman
holding hands, and something told me. I said, I like that.
(16:13):
Then I said what I said, when I grew up,
I'm going to learn how to hold my spouses hands.
Both of us laughed. When I say that, it's a
visual body language that demonstrates what love is, what caring is.
(16:38):
I always marvel a gentleman who take their hat when
they see a lady who opened the door of the
car for their lady. This is just awesome to me,
and it just tells me this is a little practice.
You don't need to have a PhD to that. It's
(17:01):
just a little practice knowing that whoever you are wish
means so much to you. My mother demonstrates all her
life that we her nine children mean so much to her.
As a matter of fact, when my father died, and
(17:21):
he died rather young, fifty one years young, he was
an excellent health. However, at that time I'm talking about
nineteen fifty six, there was no medical care for asthma. Reportedly,
he probably died of an asthmatic attack, again putting it
(17:45):
back in the years nineteen fifty six when there was
no care for that. So I'm hoping that readers will
know that we a society sometimes who don't give enough credits,
(18:07):
enough credits to mothers who sacrificed everything just to make
sure that we the children become somebody without me. And
again a little side story about this I knew at earlier,
(18:29):
but I have far older and far younger siblings. When
I look back at my parents on their way of
handling family planning, I said to myself, Oh, my goodness,
I am so glad my parents did not stop at
(18:54):
just having three or four children, Otherwise I would not
be alive today and the fifth of life. Wow, and
these times in a love intricate way with my beautiful
wife in the earlier years of I had dated, she
(19:15):
remarked to me, at what time he said, whoever I
married must agree to her ten children with me. I
smiled and I said to her, I guess that rules
me out of it. So later in life, as I
(19:39):
was thinking, I became new wises, I wondered what might
have been in her mind when she said that. And
no one, behold it don't on me. You know, it's
been said that parents read their children the way these
parents themselves were real. So later I found out that
(20:04):
Ednes has ten siblings, including herself. Wow, it was her
father and her mother. No multiple wives now, just husband
and wife and ten children. So I figured that maybe
at that moment when she said that, she was saying,
if I can't break my parents' record, at least I
(20:27):
must need it. And it's so funny too that myny
myself and for some reason I'm in the middle, so
I have a total of eight siblings. So I figure, oh,
my lord, this is this is this is a wonderful
coincidence in terms of family numbering system. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Wow, I mean, your stories are beautiful, and there's so
many more stories and prayers and things that happened to
you during your life, and so much of that again
the rock, as you said, your mother meet my Mother
is a wonderful gift belongings another book worthy of people going.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
To get doctor John. We could talk to you forever.
Thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 4 (21:13):
Yes, God bless
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