Anthonia Akitunde

Share an early memory.

I read a lot. I also used to tell pretty big whoppers. I was inspired by Encyclopedia Brown and Harriet The Spy and I pretended that I was on the case of missing jewelry in our apartment complex. I had a little recorder and I would tell my friends that this was a case that I needed their help on. They were like, “Shouldn’t the police get involved? What are we really doing here?” Storyteller now, compulsive liar back then. I was just kind of a quirky, nerdy kid.

What is your family like?

We’re a typical Nigerian family in that respect for your elders and getting a great education are above all else. My parents were parents first and foremost, not friends. I couldn’t go to them and expect a friendly response to kids picking on me for not wearing the right shoes or having the right hair. They’d be like, “We’re not sending you to school to be in a fashion show.” I didn’t understand it growing up, but I appreciate it now. I see the kind of life that my parents have had and how hard it was to raise three kids as immigrants who left their families behind. I feel like I shouldn’t complain.

They worked a lot. My Mom worked mornings and my Dad had a typical 9-to-5, so he would get me ready for school. He was doing my hair and putting me in dresses. I was very much a tomboy, so I hated it, but, in retrospect, I can appreciate a father who knows how to do his daughter’s hair. Those pictures are adorable. They’re really good for Throwback Thursdays.

I was always very much the social butterfly, and my brothers are a little bit more interior fellas, but they’re really funny. We’re all getting closer the older that we get and we’re giving each other the space to get to know each other as people and not as Sibling 1, Sibling 2, Sibling 3.

Tell me about your community growing up. Did you know anyone Jewish?

Kansas City is one of the most segregated towns I’ve ever lived in. My community was mostly black.

I knew about Jewish people from learning about the Holocaust, but I didn’t really know any Jewish people until high school. In The Babysitter’s Club they introduced a Jewish character and I didn’t realize she was Jewish. I just thought she was mixed because she had tawny skin and curly hair. I was like, “Wow, they have a mixed person? Oh, she’s Jewish? Ooooh, OK.”

Did you ever dream about what you’d be when you grew up?

I always knew I wanted to be a writer. In 6th grade, for Career Day, I dressed up as a journalist. I had a little Vtech computer and jeans that were up to here that weren’t even cool back then, so I can’t blame it on the time period. If you were to ask 14-year-old Tomi where she thought she would be today, she would tell you that she would be a journalist in New York in a loft with exposed brick walls and a black spiral staircase, but 14-year-old Tomi didn’t know anything about rents in New York.

What advice would you give your teenage self?
When you’re in elementary school, you’re known for what you can do: you’re the fastest or you’re the smartest or you’re the funniest. Your value wasn’t based on looks or knowing how to dress. In middle school, it was just a whole new set of rules – who are you hanging out with, what shoes are you wearing, how does your hair look? – and I didn’t get the memo. Middle school to freshman year was pretty awful, and then, as they say, it got better. I think that’s what I would tell myself. I wouldn’t trade those awkward years because I think that it’s why I am the way I am now. I wish I had had a thicker skin or had access to all these images we have now of Black Girls Rock and Black Girls Are Magic and Isa Rae’s Awkward Black Girl – just different ways of being black that didn’t exist when I was 11.

How has Judaism played a role in your relationship with your fiancé, Scott?

On our 4th date, I asked him if I had to convert. He’s super funny, he’s very kind, the most supportive person I’ve ever dated. I didn’t want it to get to a point where I fell in love with him and then he was like, “Oh, by the way, you have to convert.” I also didn’t want to have to convert to be with someone. I thought that would be lying to him and lying to his faith, since I’m pretty agnostic. He said I wouldn’t have to convert, but that he would want his kids to be raised Jewish, which makes sense to me. I like that being in this relationship is pushing me to figure out a part of my identity that I just made jokes about, like, “Oh, I’m a lapsed Catholic, don’t tell my mom.” I hadn’t had a real thoughtful conversation with myself about it.

How do you two incorporate Judaism into your lives now?

We celebrate all the big holidays with his family, and this past year was the first year we lit candles for Hanukkah, which gave me a lot of feelings. We just got back from Kansas City where we were interviewing rabbis to officiate our wedding and having our parents meet for the first time. We met two rabbis that we really liked. The third one we met…sorry, now I’m about to have a rage blackout.

Go there.

He used a racial slur when talking to us. It was like a record scratched – errrrrr! Scott shut it down. I had no words, it was like someone had just drained all the water in my body. I couldn’t even form the spit necessary to say something to him. From my understanding, Judaism is really rooted in family and passing on history and tradition to future generations. But how are our kids gonna be treated in this faith that’s supposed to be liberal, but has a rabbi saying the N word? We’ve been doing a lot of research into how Jewish people of color feel in Jewish spaces, and there are a lot of personal stories of devout Black Jews saying they often don’t feel accepted because they don’t “look Jewish.” We’re having pretty meaty conversations about it. Is Judaism big enough to truly include people of different backgrounds? If I were to convert or if I ultimately decided not to convert but wanted to raise our kids Jewish, will my children be considered Jewish? And not just on paper but in practice when we go into temples as a family? Those are questions that I have.

Why did you start mater mea?

It was created as a kind of wish fulfillment to talk to women who I really admired, but to also get a real sense of how people create these lives that we envy. It was around the time of Lean In and “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All,” and none of those conversations in mainstream media included women of color, specifically Black women. The media was also focused on women who were at the very top of their careers, so I wanted to create something for people who didn’t fancy themselves as a future COO of Facebook or Hillary Clinton’s right-hand woman.

I wanted something that got into the real, nitty gritty parts of having a family and career with women who looked like me and who have an understanding of certain experiences that are unique to being a Black woman. The photo-driven layout and the way the stories are told normalizes our experience for ourselves and for other people. I’m positioning mater mea to be a media company instead of a passion project. I would love for mater mea to be the business that you contact if you want to reach a Black woman of a certain demographic, with or without kids. That’s the dream.

What are qualities that you admire in others and who are some people who really inspire you?

The thread that connects all of the mater mea women is their ability to create something in a space where other people would say they shouldn’t be. I appreciate their drive to be the thing that they don’t see. I love really authentic women. Women who aren’t afraid to show the messiness of being a human being, who are really honest about that and don’t think that it’s a sign of weakness. They’re all beautiful inside and out. They’re just #goals. Everything you would want to be. The prototype mater mea mom was Solange. She beats her own drum and has created this whole empire based purely on her interests and she’s been able to envision this beautiful world that I want to live in. The moms that we’ve had on the site that I love that work hard are Staceyann Chin, the poet, Wangechi Mutu, I’m obsessed with her as an artist and being able to be in her home and studio was just like “Aaaaaah!” Timberly Whitfield, who has a Jewish husband. This woman, Takiema Bunche-Smith. That was the first story I did where I realized that there’s a power in storytelling, because she had a stillbirth and was telling me that story and how she worked through her grief to get to the point where she could try again, and it was just like, “Oh, this is not just me talking to women to talk to women, it’s actually healing for a lot of people.”

Do you have a personal mantra?

The thing my mom says a lot that I’m trying to incorporate is that you can’t judge where you are by someone else’s watch. It might be right on time for someone else, but it may not be my time yet. Another thing she says is whatever is supposed to be yours will be yours. It won’t be a fight to get it. It’ll just come to you. She said that a lot about dating!

Favorite writers? Favorite books?

I love Toni Morrison. Reading Beloved was the first time I realized the power of words to heal and transform. I just finished reading Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi. It’s so good. It’s the story of a family. One line is on the continent of Africa, the other, through slavery, gets sent to America. It’s quick snapshots of these individuals’ lives and how they interplay together. She’s like 26 and started working on it when she was 20. She’s so fucking talented. And I’m watching cartoons.

Do you have a favorite or least favorite Jewish food?
I feel like I just have favorites. I really like gefilte fish. It reminds me of a Nigerian dish my mom makes called moi-moi. I really like chopped liver. Matzah with chopped liver is my jam. How could I forget bagels? And lox? Bagels and lox! What am I doing?

As you think about how Judaism plays into your own life, what are the questions left to be asked, what are the things left to be addressed? Either by you or by the Jewish community?

With the browning of our country and the intermixing of our country, is Judaism big enough to allow for that? I didn’t know that many Jewish people growing up, but now I know a lot of Jewish people, I’m marrying a Jewish guy, and there’s always been this sense of “Come on in, the water is fine,” but that’s on an interpersonal level. As an institution, that has not been the experience that I’ve gotten. Is Judaism big enough to include people of different backgrounds, and, if I were to convert, or if I ultimately decided not to but raise our kids Jewish, is that enough? I’m really excited to be with someone whose faith means so much to him and in a way that makes him a good person. It could go either way. When we were lighting the Hanukkah candles, I got really feelings-y about doing that with our kids one day, and his family is super funny and fun, so I’m really excited to continue to be Jewish adjacent, if not Jewish one day.

Photos by Emanuel Hahn.