Erin Ajayi
speaker
38 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard Mar 2025
Erin Ajayi’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsNo recordings in the last 12 months.Older appearances are listed below; set an alert to hear about the next one.
Appearances
Yes, Erin Ajayi. This was my first season with Nobody Should Believe Me as the researcher and fact checker. This was very cathartic for me. I've been transitioning from nonprofit administration and fundraising world. And so one of the things that really gripped me with this story in particular was just the undertones of a white saviorism and that being a theme of,
you know, Sophie going to do mission work and being coming out of the nonprofit field. There is a lot of that, particularly with donors, that notion of white saviorism and good-ish intent, but I really wanted to dive into that part of the story. And then also, too, my family's Nigerian, and so I think going into and exploring the cross-cultural ties with transracial and transnational adoption
um, was another thing that really, um, deeply interested me. Uh, and the final thing is I actually went to college in West Michigan. And so, uh, so understanding, um, white evangelicalism and, and where kind of Sophie came from and grew up, um, there were just a lot of, lots of cross-pollination, um, with experiences in my own life, um, that I could, um,
see and observe and unfortunately in a lot of ways relive, but hopefully bring to light a lot of problematic issues.
Yeah.
More bragging. No, vigorous nods all around. And also, Greta, you're just a phenomenal editor as well. So, yeah, truly.
And can I just add, it's a very personal benefit to the advertisements industry. If we need to cut this out, we can. But actually, Lume deodorant, it's really good. I discovered that during the course of this season. I'm not even kidding. And I'm logging in from Texas where it's very warm and good deodorant really matters. And so I'm just... Personally, I benefited from the repetition.
We'll just cut this and slice it to Lumi.
But under the quince, I'm just saying it's very good deodorant. Yeah, it is.
Without the crap.
Yeah, this is Erin again. And I think, you know, in the research process, I started with the memoir and trying to get to understand Sophie and where she came from and her background. So that's where I actually started with this story. And then later kind of went down the rabbit hole of the accusations and things like that.
But, you know, certainly I think anytime someone goes in to go to a different country in which they will be the minority race is going. It's it becomes an issue. Right. And I think an important element of investigation. And there are a lot of problematic issues. depictions of Zambia in Sophie's memoir.
I think the monolith that people have about the continent of Africa falls in line with a lot of what Sophie was writing. And so to bring that to light, I think was very important to call that out was really important. I often said several times throughout this process, if you heard Sophie tell it, she'd never met a
So just the way that the children and the people were depicted in her memoir, I felt was deeply unfair and inaccurate. And I think that that was the first call out. And certainly, I think when you use the lens of, you know, Sophie coming in as a young white missionary, right, to this poor, depraved black country, right?
It just, the dynamics there and a lot of the racist undertones, intentional or not, were there. And I think that they certainly deserve to be called out. And because her children came from this place that she very rarely talked about being beautiful or having any sort of beauty or redeeming qualities in.
For me, it led me to question and I guess be more sensitive to how she thinks of her daughters or the lens at which she views her daughters, right? And just that degree of sensitivity that we see when Emma's in gymnastics, right? And the degree of sensitivity to to seize experience in the medical system.
So, again, it's something that, you know, I would beg to say that race was an issue that Sophie brought up. And so we followed we followed that thread and pulled on it where it were needed.
Mariah, can I just read a quote from a listener that we got? And Nola, thank you for compiling all of this feedback for us. But one comment is the idea that you would do an international adoption and then immediately put one of those children in a super competitive environment where they are missing out on social and educational development in order to train all day is just bizarre.
And that was a comment from a listener. And I think, Brian, that absolutely underscores the point that you were just making.
I know one of the things that certainly I've learned from you, Andrea, and listening to the show is just this division that can be created between siblings, right? The sibling who is experiencing the Munchausen by proxy abuse, and then the sibling who is, you know, for all intents and purposes, kind of typical in their development. And so for me, I think what the
Showing 1–20 of 38 · page 1 of 2
Next →