AI transcript
I only know two Nigerians you and lovey. I don’t know if you know lovey. Oh, yes. Well,
I don’t know her personally, but I follow her on social media. Very cool. Very cool.
We once got into a whole discussion about Nigerian weddings and how they like go for
three days and stuff. Did you have a Nigerian wedding like that? I did. It was a very lavish
affair, you could say. It was massive and this was in 2022. So we were just not really
coming out of the pandemic, but starting to get a little bit more socially comfortable
with the new normal. And we had like 600 people at my traditional Nigerian wedding. I know
I’m very proud of my Nigerian culture. I’m very proud of my Igbo culture. But still,
it was a lot. And then I had our traditional Western wedding.
One of the people who have been on this podcast is John M. Chu. And John M. Chu is a director
of crazy rich Asians. So I could reach out to him and ask him if he wants to make crazy
rich Nigerians and be you and love you. Oh my goodness. That would be a wild time.
And you know, I would actually love to see Nigerians painted in that light in the sense
of we’re not, I feel like a lot of African culture doesn’t always get painted or seen
in that perspective of, you know, there’s absolutely affluence within African cultures.
It’s there as well. So I think you might be tapping into a really interesting side.
I mean, let’s face it. Most Americans think that Africa is a country, not a continent,
right?
Oh, yes. Yes. Yes. And that’s something that definitely, oh, it gets to me every time I
hear people say that.
So this initial discussion has been so funny. We’ll probably keep it in the podcast. But
at some point I should introduce you.
So I’m Guy Kawasaki. You’ve been already listening to the remarkable people podcast
and we’re on a mission to make you remarkable. And today we have a remarkable guest who’s
also been a Barbie role model. Her name is Chika Oriwa. She’s a remarkable person. She
has a background in medicine. She was one out of 259 students who’s in the University
of Toronto Medical School, and she’s an activist, a poet, and just kind of is outstanding in
everything basically. So that’s why she’s on our podcast. So Chika, welcome to remarkable
people.
Thank you for having me here, Guy. And thank you for that introduction. I’m so honored.
I think the honor is mine, but yeah, we won’t go there. So I have a question for you, one
author to another because I’ve authored 16 books and I’m the one of the hardest things,
if not the hardest thing about writing a book is figuring out the title, right? So I just
want to know, having read your book, did you ever consider calling your book, even you
as opposed to what you did call your book?
So the origin story of the title is very interesting because when I was finishing writing up the
book proposal, which I’m sure you’re very familiar with and getting that big massive
document of the outline and the pitch and everything, I needed a title in order to submit
it to the publisher. And I was like, oh, I don’t know what to put. Unlike the rest, I
thought it was just going to be a placeholder. But then my agent loved it. My husband was
like, this is a great title. And I was like, yeah, okay, well, we’ll just keep it there
for now. But as I actually went to write the book, that phrase, even you, it was one of
the most resonant, I would say, that it resonated with me, but it also resonated with a lot
of the readers when they ended up also reading it. But I think if there was an alternate title,
I would give the book, it would probably be especially me, which is the line that follows
even you in I believe it’s chapter three towards the end of it, where I say even me and then
I think especially me. And I think I want that to encapsulate truly what I’m trying
to drive home with this book is that we get to define what our greatness is, we get to
define what our story is. And I don’t want anyone to ever try and take away that ownership
or to challenge that.
As I read your book, I said, wow, this incident at the American Canadian border, I’ll give
a little bit of background for the listeners who are wondering, what the hell are these
two people talking about? In about 2000 and I think 13, Chica was in a car with three
other girls and then they had just finished some academic work and they were going from
Toronto to Buffalo on a shopping spree. And at the American border, the American immigration
agent was asking them why they’re going to America and they were explaining what their
background was and their medical school students and they’re on the way to celebrate it and
they’re going to Buffalo for shopping. And when the guard came to Chica in the car, they
explained that she’s going to be a doctor too. And he said something like, even you,
in other words, even you, a black girl, you could be a doctor. Did I get that story right?
Yes. So with the minor tweakment of the detail that I actually don’t think I mentioned this
in the book, but alongside me in the car were two of my friends who were of Chinese descent
and then one of my friends was Guyanese. And so we were all women of colour and I think
that actually brings in an even more interesting analysis because we were all women of colour.
However, I was singled out and I was the only black individual in the car and he said, even
you, when we had clearly stated what our ambitions were and how it was that we knew each other
because he has had to guys know each other. We were all undergraduate students at McMaster
University in our health sciences program. We all wanted to be doctors. And so that
reflexive questioning of this dream that I’ve held since I was three years old in that moment,
I was indignant, but I was also a bit scared because this was an authority figure. And so
I didn’t know how to appropriately measure out and weigh my indignation against what
I was taught, which is also always to be very calm and docile in the presence of authority.
So are you telling me that even in Canada, black parents have the talk with their kids?
Absolutely. I think because this understanding of the systems of racism are not limited to
the American border. This is a ubiquitous universal experience. When we talk about anti-blackness,
we see it in a global sense. And so when my parents came from Nigeria to Canada in the
1980s, they experienced that racialization. They experienced that anti-blackness. And so
for my parents, it was never really this sit down talk of this is what you’re going to
go through. It was sprinkled throughout different conversations. It was always a touch point
of you have to behave in this certain way or else certain things can happen to you.
And really, and I talk about this a lot in my book, Unlike the Rest, where I say that
my father and his experience is navigating his career as a pharmaceutical technician
as a nurse and how anti-blackness impacted him. That when he was trying to spirit me
along on this journey of medicine, he always beat into me this humility that in his mind
was the way for me to be able to survive a system that also had anti-blackness in it.
But then the unfortunate outcome was actually trying to make me smaller, to make me less
identifiable in certain ways to really try and erase all the parts of my identity that
I thought that I now know is beautiful, but to him was a bullseye. So it was always an
ever present theme throughout my life.
Wow. So at this point in your career, have you reached a level of accomplishment where
you are simply a great doctor or great writer or great poet? And you know what? It’s not
that she’s the black person there in the room. She’s just fully accomplished. Have you reached
that point or do you think that point is reachable in this society?
So that’s a really interesting question because I think that with writing this book especially,
I viewed it as my biggest act of liberation. And what I mean by that is that I feel that
once certain individuals, especially black people, black women, once we reach a certain
level of accomplishment and success, that sometimes all it is that we are recognized
for is how it is that we can contribute, say for example, from an EDI perspective or from
certain perspectives where our blackness is at the forefront. And that is something that
is always going to be so vital and critical to who I am, but I don’t want it to be the
sole way in which I’m defined. And so I felt that for a long time, I was seen in almost
this one dimensional analysis of my personality, of my skills, of my talents. And so writing
this book for me was in many ways liberating such that I can be seen in the fullness of
who it is that I am, the fullness of my humanity, a three dimensional analysis. Yes, I will
always be so exceptionally proud of being a black woman and that is something I take
pride in. However, I am also a doctor. I’m also a writer. I am a mother. I’m a public
speaker. I’m a performer. I’m an author. There’s all of these things that I am. And
the fullness of that is what I want to be celebrated.
Don’t take this wrong. But if I were a racist white person, you would be my greatest fear.
I don’t take that wrong because I am so aware of that. I think that our society, A, an empowered
woman is something that terrifies our society. And I don’t think we need to look far to
see an example of just how afraid our society can get when a woman is audacious and loud
and intelligent and successful and all of the different things. But when you layer on
top of that, a racialized woman, a black woman, again, we needn’t look far to see an example
of this, but when you bring in these different intersections, I can see that inherently individuals
are intimidated because I create and I’m aware of this. I know that there’s this creation
of this cognitive dissonance. Our understanding, or at least the way in which black people
have been socialized, the way in which the perceptions of black people have been embedded
into our culture is that we are supposed to be less intelligent. Women are supposed to
be less intelligent, less accomplished. That African individuals, again, there is all of
these incredibly racist stereotypes about the intelligence of black women, especially.
So then when I show up, or when other incredibly intelligent black women show up like Levy
as well, and we challenge this idea, this long held idea, it creates this cognitive
dissonance. And so some of the ways in which this is reconciled is through that fear. It’s
through that anger, because usually you are afraid of things or you are angered by things
that you don’t understand. And so I know that I evoke that emotion, and it’s something
that I’ve had to contend with for a long time.
I can guess the answer to this question, but I bet you were even more disappointed than
I was that Kamala Harris lost the election. We have one of the most qualified candidates
against one of the least qualified candidates, and she loses, and I just don’t get it.
Yeah, I was devastated. And I think, you know, it’s interesting because the American political
system is very fascinating because it feels like the whole world holds its breath until
we know what’s happening. And I think for so many reasons, it’s understandable, especially
as a Canadian. I mean, we are, we’re literally geographically so close, but even culturally
in so many of the other ways in which we are reactionary, or we respond in very similar
ways to what happens in the States. And so very much, I felt that a lot of Canadians
and a lot of individuals worldwide were taken aback, were disappointed, devastated. I struggled
immensely on that morning of the election results when it was declared who had won.
And it was really devastating, as I’m sure as it was for all, for a lot of Americans
and for you as well. So yeah.
So can we back up for a second and just tell us the story of you figuring out that of 259
students in the entering class at the University of Toronto Medical School, you are the only
black one. So what was that like?
To take you back to that exact moment, I would have to give a little bit of a preamble
because I had gone into it with such significant expectation. I just finished my undergraduate
program at McMaster University in Hamilton, which is a stone’s throw from Toronto. And
I was the only black student in my graduating class in 2015 for my undergraduate program
at Mac. And out of the medical schools that I’d gotten into, U of T was the only school
that had a Black Medical Students Association. And so amongst all of the reasons of why I
wanted to go to the University of Toronto, it was close to home. It’s an incredibly prestigious
medical institution. And it had this Black Medical Students Association. I just felt
that I was going to deviate from that narrative of being the only black student. And so when
I arrived on the morning of my stethoscope ceremony day and I looked around and I saw
that I didn’t really see any other black students. I thought, maybe they just haven’t
shown up yet. It’s orientation week. It’s not really the first full week of school.
And so when we got to the actual stethoscope ceremony and they were calling every single
student across the stage one by one, and my last name starts with an O. And so I was
fairly further on down in the alphabet. And I remember crossing the stage and thinking,
I still have not seen any other black people. And then coming off the stage and sitting
in the seat of the auditorium and then seeing everyone else go by and thinking, oh my gosh,
as I’m holding this Hippocratic Oath and we’re reciting it and I’m thinking in the back of
my head, there are no other black people in my class. 259 students in 2016 in downtown
Toronto, the most culturally diverse city in this country, one of the most culturally
diverse cities in the world. It was absolutely heartbreaking, I would say, but also a disillusionment.
I was stunned by it, simply stunned.
I read in your book, you faced various kinds of racism. And so perhaps you can explain
to people because obviously I’m not black, so I haven’t experienced what you experienced.
But from that patient who said, get all the non doctors out of this room and said, this
black woman, she can’t be a doctor, get her out of this room. And some of the interactions
you had with your teachers, just explain what kind of racism you encountered. And also for
each kind of racism, what should you do?
The way that I like to break down the different kinds of racism. So there’s things known as
microaggressions, which are your daily racial slights, racial grievances that on the surface,
maybe to a desensitized ear, you might not even recognize that it could be something
that’s racially aggressive. Case in point, whenever I would meet a patient or another
medical student, and I was always frequently asked, where were you born? Are you Canadian?
Or are you used to the winters? Like it was just a constant assertion and the assumption
that I was not of Canadian origin that I could not have been born. I must have been born elsewhere.
So this is gatekeeping of the Canadian identity that constantly made me have to explain myself
even at the outset of a medical encounter. And then on the opposite side of that are more
macro aggressive, more intensely obvious, I guess you could say racial grievances where
it was a direct challenging of my intelligence, my capacity, my ability to actually be a doctor.
So as you mentioned, having a patient who had directly said that I had to leave the
room, because I didn’t look like a doctor, even though being repeatedly told that I was
a part of the medical team, and then still the patient actually growing more agitated,
growing more aggressive, because they did not want me in the room, and bearing in mind
that I did not have any training as to how I was supposed to deescalate that situation,
how I was supposed to encounter that situation, although I had specifically asked for that
training prior to my clerkship years. And these kinds of experiences, it really permeated
my medical education, which was an exemplary medical education at the University of Toronto.
However, I was still facing it from so many different angles. So from patients, sometimes
from my attendings, from other medical students, and then when I eventually did my public facing
advocacy, then facing it from the public, which was just an entirely different beast
unto itself.
Now going back to that incident where that patient asked you to or told you to get out
of the room, as I recall, you left the room and you were in tears, and then it was like
a very traumatic tearful thing, but looking back, should you have just stood your ground
and confronted him and taken him on, or what would you do today if that happened?
So I would say that firstly, I want to hold grace for where I was in my journey as a medical
student, and not necessarily having had the tools or the understanding or the insight
into what to do in that moment. And so I did leave the room tearfully. I truly did not
know what I was supposed to do alternatively. Interestingly, I mentioned in the book that
one of the older fellows, medical fellows had came out afterwards and said, “You should
have stayed in the room. That’s what you were supposed to do.” And I think, as I said,
I give myself grace for where I was in that journey. Now, having my MD, being a doctor,
being a resident doctor, if I was in that same situation, what I would do is I would
likely stay in the room, I would likely reaffirm to them and reassure them that I am a physician,
I’m part of the medical team, I am here to help you. And of course, if the patient gets
increasingly agitated, I would then employ the skills that I’ve since learned as to
how to de-escalate that situation. I also think it helps when institutions, when hospitals
have policies that we can actually reflect back to the patient. So this is a teaching
hospital and in a teaching hospital, you have to be seen by the practitioner who is available
and that would be myself. And if it got to the point where I felt that my safety was actually
in parallel or that I was about to be physically harmed, of course, I would go and get the
appropriate resources to help that’s around there as well. But I think where I am now
is very different than where I was then all those years ago.
You are clearly a better person than I am. There’s no question about that. I don’t know
if I would have done that. I can think of a lot of things, but grace would not be the
top of mind for me in that situation. So you became active after a decision to turn them
down, but you changed your mind for the Black Student Application Program. Could you just
explain that to me because this was something to increase the recruitment of Black students
to your medical school. And I think it went from one out of 259 to 14 a year later or two
years later, right? So now, what exactly? Because you made a very clear point that even if you
did this Black Student Application Program, the academic rigors were the same. So what
did the program do? What was the goal?
So the goal in a nutshell was to increase the number of Black applicants applying into
the MD stream at the University of Toronto. And what it aimed to do was to ameliorate
some of the biases that were inherent within the application program system. And so what
they did is that they required that the applicant write an additional essay. So the way that
U of T usually works for its stream to apply to medical school is that it requires you
to write a series of short essays. About eight was what I had to write when I applied to
medical school. And so for this stream, they required you to answer an additional question.
Now I’m unsure if that exact question has changed over the years, but what it was back then,
which is why did you feel it was important for you to apply through this Boxing Application
stream? And how is it that your identity may impact your medical training and things such
as that? And that was incorporated, but then it was also incorporated that a Black file
reviewer or a member of the Black community, Black academic community, Black medical community
would be involved in reviewing your application as well as the actual interviewing process.
Now that was very different for me because when I was in the process of applying to medical
school, I actually vividly remember the day of my U of T medical interview, which I talk
about, I write about in the book where I enter and it’s just a sea of medical school candidates.
And of course, the anxiety and the sweat is like palpable in the air. And I walk in and
there’s just no other Black applicants. There were no Black invigilators. There were no Black
interviewers either as you went from station to station. And there’s about four stations,
12 minutes per station. And so when you’re going into these spaces and nobody looks like
you, you’re naturally going to just be aware of that. At least for myself, I was naturally
attuned to that, especially having been in so many places before where I was only a Box
student. And so what a difference it makes to actually be able to alleviate some of the
implicit bias that can be present within this system. And that’s what the Boxing Application
Program aimed to do and continues to do and has made a significant impact in the educational
environment, not just for the Black students, but for all students, the diversity of thought,
the diversity of lived experience, the diversity of culture enriches the educational and the
medical educational environment for everyone.
And do you think that some of the students are still thinking, oh, this is a Black student,
so it was less academically rigorous. There’s a quota system. It’s unfair. It’s reverse
discrimination. Do you think that still happens there?
I am sure that there are individuals who may question whether or not, you know, another
Black student had merited their spot. I think that is, again, a vestige of racism. And I
know that as I was in medical school, I was fielding that remark constantly, constant
questioning even on my very first day of medical school, day one, just the morning before my
stethoscope ceremony, someone asking me, did they make it easier for you to get in here?
Did you need lower grades? You’re the only Black student. So did they do something to
make it easier for you? That was before BSAP was even instituted. And so I am sure that
there may be individuals out there who are thinking these thoughts or feeling these thoughts
because these are the thoughts that have pre-existed the BSAP program. However, I can assure you
that intelligence, the tenacity, the ambition of these students, of these Black students
going through, it will rival any other student who was there, any other student. And I just
actually gave the convocation keynote for the class of 2024. And this was the largest
class of Black medical students in Canadian history that came into the University of
Toronto. And they had just graduated this past year. And guess what? The number two student
out of the 260 students that got the second highest grades across all four years was a
Black woman. And I think that that stands as a brilliant example of the fact that we are
not diluting the collective intelligence of the class. No, no, no, no, no. These are the
students who we would have lost to the American schools. And this is true. I actually, when
I was doing my first year of mentorship for the BSAP program, so when I was still a second
year medical student talking to these other students, encouraging them to apply through
BSAP, many of them were saying, I got a scholarship to Yale. I have a scholarship to Northwestern.
I have a scholarship to these places in the States that have already been doing these
kinds of programs and systems, encouraging Black medical students to apply or Black students
to apply to their medical school. So we were going to lose them when, in fact, now we are
retaining them. We are retaining this talent, the brain drain. We’re slowing it down. And
so I don’t agree at all with anyone who questions the intelligence of Black medical students.
Well, just to set the record straight, didn’t you become the valedictorian of your class?
I was elected. I was selected by my class to be the valedictorian of my class. And that
is an honor that I wear with so much incredible pride and responsibility. And I write about
this in the book as well because it was almost ironic because in literal definition, the
valedictorian is supposed to reflect the class. So it was ironic because I was so different
from the rest of the class that it speaks and that my being selected speaks to the transcendence
of the work that I was trying to accomplish, the transcendence of who it is that I am and
what I embody, which is truly embracing your audaciously authentic spirit, embracing what
it means to be a physician, what it means to be an astute medical student, someone who
genuinely cares for other individuals. These things are transcendent. And I’m really so
grateful that my class appreciated that and saw that and that I was able to have that
incredible opportunity.
Speaking of transcendent, I am asking you now to tell the story of your interview and
when you were in the interview and you’re prepared for every possible question except
when you opened the door and told the interviewer that you participate in slam poetry and he
asked you to recite a poem. I must say I’ve never heard of that in any application interview.
So please tell that story.
Absolutely. I feel like most people can relate to that experience when you’re entering into
an interview. And certainly if you’re interviewing for a professional school like medicine, these
interviews, you feel like you have spent your entire life working towards this one moment
that feels so decisive for the trajectory of the rest of your life. And so through militant
fashion in the weeks preceding this interview, I had done an archeological dig throughout
my entire life. And I literally had a notebook that was very thick and it was highlighted.
It had every single detail down to what was going to make me a brilliant medical student
and a brilliant doctor thereafter. And so when I was in that interview room and we had
spent it’s about 12 minutes per room, and we had spent maybe eight or so minutes going
through my resume talking about all the different things, my research and my extracurriculars
and everything. And we had a couple of minutes left and I thought, okay, now’s the chance
for me like in regular interviews to then turn the tables a little bit and ask him some
questions about the University of Toronto and what it’s like to be a medical student,
what it’s like research within the institution. And so when I thought it was my turn to start
asking some questions, and then he looks at the final line of my resume and he saw that
I’d recently competed at the Canadian Festival, spoken word and was nationally ranked. I placed
as one of one of the finalists with my team, the Hamilton Youth Poets. And so he looked
at it and he said, Oh, you’re a performance poet. Interesting. So I’m in the company of
a nationally ranked poet. Why don’t you perform something for me. And that moment, the sheer
terror that just blitzed through my body of my spine. I was like, Oh my gosh, I had not
rehearsed a poem in several months. That was end of January was that interview. And I had
not competed or been on a stage since October of the previous year. And I’d actually put
myself into semi retirement because it was so exhausting preparing for nationals that
I did not want to do any poetry at all in the interval. And so in that moment, I had
to make a quick calculation of am I going to share a poem because I knew I had my entire
repertoire of poems memorized, you have to do that if you’re going to be a professional
poet. So I knew that I could execute it. I just had to think quickly what poem would
he want me to share. And he said, you know, do your best poem. And immediately I thought
of my poem skin, which talks about my experiences of being in my skin as a black woman and navigating
the world in my blackness and in my femininity and all the different things. And the interviewer
was a senior white male cardiologist at the University of Toronto, at least on the surface.
Very different from me with regard to all of those different aspects. And so I didn’t
know if this was going to land with him. I had no idea what his political inclinations
were. I had no idea what his value systems, I had no idea. But in that moment, I decided
to take what I now call an audaciously authentic stance. And I was going to share it. So in
that moment, I shared with him, my skin is like dark ebony under the blazing sun. Won’t
you tell me that I’m beautiful and don’t preface it by telling me the limiting conditions
of my beauty. And I remember thinking after I gave him about probably a minute or so of
that poem, pausing when the bell rang out. And it was just me and him and I like came
back into my body. And it was just this moment of horror of looking at him like, Oh my goodness,
I can’t believe I just said all of that to you. Did I completely blow my medical dream
and medical ambitions? And he was like, that was amazing. Listen to the rest of it. And
it was the biggest exhale of relief I’ve ever done in my entire life, my whole life.
And did you call your mom or your sister and say, guess what I just did in my interview?
I had to recite skin or whatever. I called my mom because my mom was waiting with bated
breath to see how my interview had gone until I called her and I said, Mommy, I got to perform
in my interview and she’s perform perform. Why? Why were you performing? He asked me
to perform the poem and so I performed it and he loved it. And I think that might have
been my ticket into medical school. I don’t know how it is, but I think if anything, it
was incredibly symbolic because I always say that being a better poet, a lifetime of being
a poet, a writer has been the best preparation for me to be a doctor. And so I just think
it was very symbolic that in my medical school, in a read the most decisive moment of my life,
he asked me to perform poetry.
So back up a second and tell me, what does being a poet have to do with being a doctor?
Why is that a prep for you? It is everything that the two are so interdigitated for me.
And that’s because at the basis of being a good doctor and at the basis of being a good
poet is about being a good human. It’s about holding tight to your humanity. And what poetry,
what a lifetime of poetry has taught me to do is to have this unflinching examination
of the human experience. That’s what poets do. We always hear about the tortured poet,
the sad poet, the tortured creative. And that’s because poets analyze the world, all parts
of the world, even the parts that make us feel heartbroken, the parts that are devastating.
That’s typically where we get the best poetry. And we have to be able to do that unflinching
examination. And then on the flip side, when it comes to being a physician, what it requires
of us, especially within psychiatry, is being able to sit in some of the most heartbreaking,
other-stating, unbelievable situations, holding people’s hands through the darkest hours of
their lives, and being able to sit with them in that, to guide them through that, to be
able to continue with our critical and analytical minds throughout these kinds of situations.
And so I think that poetry has been this beautiful transference of that. But then also at the
same time, being a performance poet on top of that, taking my poetry and then giving
it to the world, that in and of itself is an act of transcendence. That has enabled
me to be able to connect with other individuals, to have conversations, much like in my medical
school interview, that might be difficult to have otherwise. Some of the hardest things
I’ve ever shared with the world, I can only do through poetry. And so that, again, has
enabled me to build this ability to not only be compassionate, but to be vulnerable. And
I take these skills and I translate them to my role as a doctor, and I truly believe that
that’s what has enabled me to be the best doctor that I can be.
So hundreds of girls are going to be listening to this podcast. I’m going to say I’m going
to study poetry so I can be a doctor.
Oh, I love that. I love that. Step one, be an amazing poet and then step two, be a doctor.
Up next, on Remarkable People.
My stance is still relatively unchanged from then because I know that the debate is so
incredibly heated and that I do have that appreciation for patients and for families
and for individuals who do believe and can see and have that perspective that there is
a point where mental illness cannot be treated and there is a point where the suffering of
what it is that they are experiencing should not be continued.
Welcome back to Remarkable People with Guy Kawasaki.
So I have to ask you a question that I have not asked any other guests and we’ve had about
260 guests, which is how does one become a Barbie role model? I just need to know that
just in case they call. So how do you do that?
It was really interesting because I got the email from Barbie. Well, through my then agent,
I was running around the hospital and I was actually a few months pregnant and then I
got the email that they wanted to make a Barbie out of me for the Barbie role model and I’m
still stammering because it still seems so surreal. I’ll never forget being in the hospital
and seeing the title, the subject line of that email and thinking, there is no way that
this is real and then realizing that no, it actually very much was real and then going
through the process. So the Barbie, Mattel, Canada, they’ve gone through their very extensive
vetting system and determining who would be the right candidates and I was selected to
represent Canada for their healthcare heroes campaign. And so this was in 2021 and they
had selected six women around the world to be Barbie role models and have Barbies made
after them and I was selected to represent Canada. And so I went through the process
with Mattel to actually create various prototypes of what I wanted my Barbie to look like. So
I was very involved in the actual creation of it and going through different iterations
and I sent them different pictures of me with different hair cells, different angles. It
was really cool to see the behind the scenes and then as they continued to tweak and create
different versions of the Barbie until it was just right. And then being able to unbox
it and actually see it in the flesh on national TV, it was just the most surreal experience.
It still doesn’t feel like it actually happens. And whenever people tell me you have a Barbie,
I’m like, Oh my gosh, I do have a Barbie. It’s the most incredible thing though. I have to
say that getting a Barbie doll may be more prestigious than a MacArthur Fellowship. I’d
have to think about that. Although I don’t think you got paid a million dollars to be
a Barbie role model. Is your doll still current? Can somebody go to Barbie.com and order the
cheek of doll? I wish. So it’s actually a one of a kind Barbie doll. So I have the only
chica say so real. Oh, I know. And I’ve been asked in the last three years by hundreds
if not thousands of people, where can I get this Barbie? And so Barbie actually does have
a black female doctor that they do sell. And so it’s not you. But no, it’s not my Barbie.
I know and it makes me so sad because I wish I could give out more of the Barbie doll that
I have. It’s incredible. But for now it’s, it’ll be played with by my son and my daughter.
And hopefully they don’t pull her head off and torture her.
It’s like getting an Olympic gold medal, right? We’ve had Olympic gold medalists on this podcast
and they often tell me, I don’t even know where it is. I think it’s in my drawer or
is it in the bathroom and like Brandy Chastain, where’s your Olympic gold medal? I don’t really
know.
I definitely know where she is because my husband who is far more not that he’s more
proud of my accomplishments, but he is really, really proud of my accomplishments. And so
he has encased the Barbie in this glass like cylindrical casing and has put her inside
of another glass case. And so she is displayed within our kid’s playroom. So like I will
always know where she is. But yeah, that is something that for me, like I guess you could
say that’s my Olympic gold medal is my Barbie doll.
And when you get selected, do you have to go on a national tour or is like being Miss
America or something? Or what do you have to do?
So it was interesting because this was also during the pandemic like this was when I received
the Barbie, it was August, early August of 2021. So I don’t know if things would have
been different if it wasn’t right in the thick of things. And I was also five months pregnant
when I received the Barbie. And so luckily I went to a few new stations and because I’m
in Toronto, everything was broadcasted nationally from Toronto. And then a whole blitz of media
came to my home, which I felt very fortunate for being five months pregnant and just being
able to, you know, walk down the stairs and oh, the media is here. I don’t have to go
too far. But it was an incredible experience. And so it was definitely cross country and
then also international because I got to do some bigger media and reach out to different
countries. And so people from all over the world were hearing this story. And that was
a really phenomenal experience.
So in the final model of this doll, how was your hair styled?
So I wanted to ensure that the Barbie was as authentic as I was and that she had a big,
beautiful afro, afro textured afro. And I wanted to ensure that it was as a booming and voluminous
as possible. And so if you look at the Barbie, it’s three times the size of the Barbie’s
head, which is hilarious. And when I do have my afro out, my afro really is quite voluminous
and beautiful. And so I wanted to ensure that the Barbie was a reflection of that. And it
certainly was.
Oh, I love that. If you think about it, and if you can remember, please send us a picture
of that Barbie doll so we can use it when we promote this episode. Because this is such
a great story.
Absolutely. I can send you the official Barbie photo.
So someday if they make a Barbie doll out of Madison, we’ll be fully prepared to know
what to do.
Yes, I can show her the Barbie ropes, the plastic ones. I can show her all of that.
I have one really serious question. And then I have one more question and you’ll be done
with me and you can go back to saving lives and writing poetry. So the serious question
is, you talk about a time where the students had to have a debate about the moral issues
of medical assistance in dying for the mentally ill. And I would love to hear what you have
to say about that. Having practiced psychiatry, should the mentally ill have the access to
medical assistance in dying?
So that is a very serious question for sure. And I wrote about this in the book, as you
mentioned, and this was actually for my residency interview day. We had to write about this.
And I shared in the book an experience, now this character is fictionalized to protect
patient confidentiality, but I share about the experience of a woman who I had met who
had faced a lifetime of serious treatment resistant mental illness, such that the point in which
they perceived their life was no longer one that was sustainable. And I wrote about that
experience when I talked about this question that we were posed with, whether or not someone
with mental illness should be granted access to maid. And in that stance, I talk about if
we want to treat mental health as serious, and as potentially devastating as ailments
within physical health, then does it not require us as physicians to then realize that there
can be mental illnesses that reach a point that are beyond treatment? And at what point
do we recognize our responsibility as doctors is not always ultimately to extend a life
but to actually protect the sanctity and the dignity of the individual who is experiencing
this illness. And I say all of that to say that I guess my stance is still relatively
unchanged from then because I know that the debate is so incredibly heated, and that I
do have that appreciation for patients and for families and for individuals who do believe
and can see and have that perspective that there is a point where mental illness cannot
be treated. And there is a point where the suffering of what it is that they are experiencing
should not be continued. And so I can appreciate that perspective. And then I can also see
the ways in which as psychiatrists that the field of psychiatry as a psychiatry resident
as a future psychiatrist, also the argument that it is our job to continue to extend the
life of individuals. It’s our job to continue to try and always improve the mental illness
of certain individuals that it might be a fleeting moment in which you believe your life is no
longer worth living, but can we potentially explore other options? And so I say all of
that to say that I don’t know if I’ve necessarily landed on a concrete answer, but it is something
that I do reflect on and have reflected on very deeply for a long time.
Okay. I lied. I actually have one more question after my final question. So my final question
and I want you to talk about your book and all that stuff, but pretend that you are addressing
young girls and they’re listening to this podcast and just give them the best advice
that you can based on your life experiences.
Oh, I love this question. What I would say to them is to never forget the power of your
voice and to use it even if your voice shakes, even if it’s a whisper, to never forget the
power of your voice and that you get to define who it is that you are, the strength that you
possess, the journey that you are on, and not to let anyone else grab the pen from your
hand and write the story of your life. You will always be the author. And so to continue
on that journey is so incredibly important and it starts with recognizing the beauty
of what your voice is. And so that’s the message I would love to relate to any young woman
listening to this podcast.
My God, you are just a fountain of poetry. I could ask you what time is it in Toronto
and it would come out as a poet. My God. Okay, promise you, this is the last thing. This
is the last thing. So we interview about 52 people a year. So we’ve done this for about
five years. So we’ve interviewed 250, 260 people. I’ve read a lot of books. I’ve seen
a lot of videos, but you had a line in one of your videos and I want to hear you say
it. Now, okay, I sure hope you remember this line because it was so memorable to me. I
hope you can remember it, but I’ll give you the gist of the line. The gist of the line
is that no need to reply. My hope is only to edify. And I thought, oh my God, that is
such a great statement. So as the last thing you do for us, could you just say that line
that stanza that I hope you haven’t memorized?
Yes, I do. It’s actually from my poem, Love Letters from My Body, which was a very vulnerable
and raw exploration of my experience with disordered eating from the ages of 19 to about
23. And I talk about that once again in the book, but this poem explores that. And so
the stanza is from that. So I can absolutely recite that line and maybe a line or two after
that. I’m just going to bring this as your medical into it.
Yay, really?
And I’m asking you to perform.
Yes. Okay. Dear Chica, she wrote, no need to reply. My hope is only to edify the wonders
that you are. When you search for meaning amidst the twilight stars, I hope you know
that the answers were always at your fingertips. You were equipped with a mind that could
steer ships lips that could part the seas promise me that you’ll never forget that you’re nothing
short of a miracle. And when you move your feet, it is lyrical. So keep dancing like
no one is watching. And if you feel the need to syncopate your joy, I will deploy a series
of letters, scented with lilac written in gold detailing the light that you hold from
me to you to us, trust that all you need to do is listen to this body.
Oh my God. Holy shit.
Sorry, I just needed to get into it. I knew I had it with me. Thank you for my…
You’re a Barbie doll and I’m not my among other reasons. But yeah, that was just remarkable.
Thank you so much for being on our podcast and you definitely have brought a great deal
of joy and light and laughter to me today. And I’m sure everybody listening to this.
So thank you so much. Oh, just tell us the name of your book because we want people to
read your book. I read it and I loved it.
Oh, thank you. And I just want to say that it has been an absolute joy and pleasure to
speak with you today and my book is called Unlike the Rest, a Doctor’s Story by me, Dr.
Chica Stacey Oriwa, and it is available wherever books are sold and also at your favorite online
retailer.
See, even your sales job is a poet. I’m going to have you do like marketing for me and my
books. I would love that. I’m going to get you and lovey and I’m going to own the Nigerian
market.
If you can introduce me to lovey, that would be the coolest day ever.
Listen, like I said, I only know two Nigerians, you and lovey. And based on that rather statistically
invalid sample, oh my God.
I will say we are pretty cool people. We are pretty remarkable people. You’re sample size,
although very small and it’s still pretty.
And John M. Chu, if you’re listening to this and you make a movie called Crazy Rich Nigerians,
you credit me for that idea, okay.
Absolutely.
All right, so this has been Remarkable People. I’m Guy Kawasaki. I hope you enjoyed this episode
as much as I did. And you learn about racism and dealing racism and reducing racism and
hopefully eliminating racism.
And if you’re a patient and you see a black woman come in to treat your room, you should
thank your lucky stars. That’s the doctor. That’s clearly what I learned today.
So I just want to thank the rest of the Remarkable People crew. That is, of course, the Remarkable
Matters and Nysemer producer and co-author Jeff C. and Shannon Hernandez, who are doing
all our sound design.
And finally, Tessa Nysemer, our ACE researcher, who helped me find all these great questions
for Chika.
And now we’re going to let you go and we’re going to let you go to your kids and your
husband and your patients and your poems and all that. And congratulations for a life well
lived. And you’re so young. Oh my God. Someday when you’re a prime minister or whatever
it is of Canada, you’ll remember me. Okay.
Thank you, Guy. This has been a hard time.
We’ll go to Tim Hortons and have breakfast.
Yes, I will treat you. I’ll treat you to a breakfast better than Tim Hortons. But yes,
I will treat you.
All right. Take care. Bye bye.
This is Remarkable People.
I don’t know her personally, but I follow her on social media. Very cool. Very cool.
We once got into a whole discussion about Nigerian weddings and how they like go for
three days and stuff. Did you have a Nigerian wedding like that? I did. It was a very lavish
affair, you could say. It was massive and this was in 2022. So we were just not really
coming out of the pandemic, but starting to get a little bit more socially comfortable
with the new normal. And we had like 600 people at my traditional Nigerian wedding. I know
I’m very proud of my Nigerian culture. I’m very proud of my Igbo culture. But still,
it was a lot. And then I had our traditional Western wedding.
One of the people who have been on this podcast is John M. Chu. And John M. Chu is a director
of crazy rich Asians. So I could reach out to him and ask him if he wants to make crazy
rich Nigerians and be you and love you. Oh my goodness. That would be a wild time.
And you know, I would actually love to see Nigerians painted in that light in the sense
of we’re not, I feel like a lot of African culture doesn’t always get painted or seen
in that perspective of, you know, there’s absolutely affluence within African cultures.
It’s there as well. So I think you might be tapping into a really interesting side.
I mean, let’s face it. Most Americans think that Africa is a country, not a continent,
right?
Oh, yes. Yes. Yes. And that’s something that definitely, oh, it gets to me every time I
hear people say that.
So this initial discussion has been so funny. We’ll probably keep it in the podcast. But
at some point I should introduce you.
So I’m Guy Kawasaki. You’ve been already listening to the remarkable people podcast
and we’re on a mission to make you remarkable. And today we have a remarkable guest who’s
also been a Barbie role model. Her name is Chika Oriwa. She’s a remarkable person. She
has a background in medicine. She was one out of 259 students who’s in the University
of Toronto Medical School, and she’s an activist, a poet, and just kind of is outstanding in
everything basically. So that’s why she’s on our podcast. So Chika, welcome to remarkable
people.
Thank you for having me here, Guy. And thank you for that introduction. I’m so honored.
I think the honor is mine, but yeah, we won’t go there. So I have a question for you, one
author to another because I’ve authored 16 books and I’m the one of the hardest things,
if not the hardest thing about writing a book is figuring out the title, right? So I just
want to know, having read your book, did you ever consider calling your book, even you
as opposed to what you did call your book?
So the origin story of the title is very interesting because when I was finishing writing up the
book proposal, which I’m sure you’re very familiar with and getting that big massive
document of the outline and the pitch and everything, I needed a title in order to submit
it to the publisher. And I was like, oh, I don’t know what to put. Unlike the rest, I
thought it was just going to be a placeholder. But then my agent loved it. My husband was
like, this is a great title. And I was like, yeah, okay, well, we’ll just keep it there
for now. But as I actually went to write the book, that phrase, even you, it was one of
the most resonant, I would say, that it resonated with me, but it also resonated with a lot
of the readers when they ended up also reading it. But I think if there was an alternate title,
I would give the book, it would probably be especially me, which is the line that follows
even you in I believe it’s chapter three towards the end of it, where I say even me and then
I think especially me. And I think I want that to encapsulate truly what I’m trying
to drive home with this book is that we get to define what our greatness is, we get to
define what our story is. And I don’t want anyone to ever try and take away that ownership
or to challenge that.
As I read your book, I said, wow, this incident at the American Canadian border, I’ll give
a little bit of background for the listeners who are wondering, what the hell are these
two people talking about? In about 2000 and I think 13, Chica was in a car with three
other girls and then they had just finished some academic work and they were going from
Toronto to Buffalo on a shopping spree. And at the American border, the American immigration
agent was asking them why they’re going to America and they were explaining what their
background was and their medical school students and they’re on the way to celebrate it and
they’re going to Buffalo for shopping. And when the guard came to Chica in the car, they
explained that she’s going to be a doctor too. And he said something like, even you,
in other words, even you, a black girl, you could be a doctor. Did I get that story right?
Yes. So with the minor tweakment of the detail that I actually don’t think I mentioned this
in the book, but alongside me in the car were two of my friends who were of Chinese descent
and then one of my friends was Guyanese. And so we were all women of colour and I think
that actually brings in an even more interesting analysis because we were all women of colour.
However, I was singled out and I was the only black individual in the car and he said, even
you, when we had clearly stated what our ambitions were and how it was that we knew each other
because he has had to guys know each other. We were all undergraduate students at McMaster
University in our health sciences program. We all wanted to be doctors. And so that
reflexive questioning of this dream that I’ve held since I was three years old in that moment,
I was indignant, but I was also a bit scared because this was an authority figure. And so
I didn’t know how to appropriately measure out and weigh my indignation against what
I was taught, which is also always to be very calm and docile in the presence of authority.
So are you telling me that even in Canada, black parents have the talk with their kids?
Absolutely. I think because this understanding of the systems of racism are not limited to
the American border. This is a ubiquitous universal experience. When we talk about anti-blackness,
we see it in a global sense. And so when my parents came from Nigeria to Canada in the
1980s, they experienced that racialization. They experienced that anti-blackness. And so
for my parents, it was never really this sit down talk of this is what you’re going to
go through. It was sprinkled throughout different conversations. It was always a touch point
of you have to behave in this certain way or else certain things can happen to you.
And really, and I talk about this a lot in my book, Unlike the Rest, where I say that
my father and his experience is navigating his career as a pharmaceutical technician
as a nurse and how anti-blackness impacted him. That when he was trying to spirit me
along on this journey of medicine, he always beat into me this humility that in his mind
was the way for me to be able to survive a system that also had anti-blackness in it.
But then the unfortunate outcome was actually trying to make me smaller, to make me less
identifiable in certain ways to really try and erase all the parts of my identity that
I thought that I now know is beautiful, but to him was a bullseye. So it was always an
ever present theme throughout my life.
Wow. So at this point in your career, have you reached a level of accomplishment where
you are simply a great doctor or great writer or great poet? And you know what? It’s not
that she’s the black person there in the room. She’s just fully accomplished. Have you reached
that point or do you think that point is reachable in this society?
So that’s a really interesting question because I think that with writing this book especially,
I viewed it as my biggest act of liberation. And what I mean by that is that I feel that
once certain individuals, especially black people, black women, once we reach a certain
level of accomplishment and success, that sometimes all it is that we are recognized
for is how it is that we can contribute, say for example, from an EDI perspective or from
certain perspectives where our blackness is at the forefront. And that is something that
is always going to be so vital and critical to who I am, but I don’t want it to be the
sole way in which I’m defined. And so I felt that for a long time, I was seen in almost
this one dimensional analysis of my personality, of my skills, of my talents. And so writing
this book for me was in many ways liberating such that I can be seen in the fullness of
who it is that I am, the fullness of my humanity, a three dimensional analysis. Yes, I will
always be so exceptionally proud of being a black woman and that is something I take
pride in. However, I am also a doctor. I’m also a writer. I am a mother. I’m a public
speaker. I’m a performer. I’m an author. There’s all of these things that I am. And
the fullness of that is what I want to be celebrated.
Don’t take this wrong. But if I were a racist white person, you would be my greatest fear.
I don’t take that wrong because I am so aware of that. I think that our society, A, an empowered
woman is something that terrifies our society. And I don’t think we need to look far to
see an example of just how afraid our society can get when a woman is audacious and loud
and intelligent and successful and all of the different things. But when you layer on
top of that, a racialized woman, a black woman, again, we needn’t look far to see an example
of this, but when you bring in these different intersections, I can see that inherently individuals
are intimidated because I create and I’m aware of this. I know that there’s this creation
of this cognitive dissonance. Our understanding, or at least the way in which black people
have been socialized, the way in which the perceptions of black people have been embedded
into our culture is that we are supposed to be less intelligent. Women are supposed to
be less intelligent, less accomplished. That African individuals, again, there is all of
these incredibly racist stereotypes about the intelligence of black women, especially.
So then when I show up, or when other incredibly intelligent black women show up like Levy
as well, and we challenge this idea, this long held idea, it creates this cognitive
dissonance. And so some of the ways in which this is reconciled is through that fear. It’s
through that anger, because usually you are afraid of things or you are angered by things
that you don’t understand. And so I know that I evoke that emotion, and it’s something
that I’ve had to contend with for a long time.
I can guess the answer to this question, but I bet you were even more disappointed than
I was that Kamala Harris lost the election. We have one of the most qualified candidates
against one of the least qualified candidates, and she loses, and I just don’t get it.
Yeah, I was devastated. And I think, you know, it’s interesting because the American political
system is very fascinating because it feels like the whole world holds its breath until
we know what’s happening. And I think for so many reasons, it’s understandable, especially
as a Canadian. I mean, we are, we’re literally geographically so close, but even culturally
in so many of the other ways in which we are reactionary, or we respond in very similar
ways to what happens in the States. And so very much, I felt that a lot of Canadians
and a lot of individuals worldwide were taken aback, were disappointed, devastated. I struggled
immensely on that morning of the election results when it was declared who had won.
And it was really devastating, as I’m sure as it was for all, for a lot of Americans
and for you as well. So yeah.
So can we back up for a second and just tell us the story of you figuring out that of 259
students in the entering class at the University of Toronto Medical School, you are the only
black one. So what was that like?
To take you back to that exact moment, I would have to give a little bit of a preamble
because I had gone into it with such significant expectation. I just finished my undergraduate
program at McMaster University in Hamilton, which is a stone’s throw from Toronto. And
I was the only black student in my graduating class in 2015 for my undergraduate program
at Mac. And out of the medical schools that I’d gotten into, U of T was the only school
that had a Black Medical Students Association. And so amongst all of the reasons of why I
wanted to go to the University of Toronto, it was close to home. It’s an incredibly prestigious
medical institution. And it had this Black Medical Students Association. I just felt
that I was going to deviate from that narrative of being the only black student. And so when
I arrived on the morning of my stethoscope ceremony day and I looked around and I saw
that I didn’t really see any other black students. I thought, maybe they just haven’t
shown up yet. It’s orientation week. It’s not really the first full week of school.
And so when we got to the actual stethoscope ceremony and they were calling every single
student across the stage one by one, and my last name starts with an O. And so I was
fairly further on down in the alphabet. And I remember crossing the stage and thinking,
I still have not seen any other black people. And then coming off the stage and sitting
in the seat of the auditorium and then seeing everyone else go by and thinking, oh my gosh,
as I’m holding this Hippocratic Oath and we’re reciting it and I’m thinking in the back of
my head, there are no other black people in my class. 259 students in 2016 in downtown
Toronto, the most culturally diverse city in this country, one of the most culturally
diverse cities in the world. It was absolutely heartbreaking, I would say, but also a disillusionment.
I was stunned by it, simply stunned.
I read in your book, you faced various kinds of racism. And so perhaps you can explain
to people because obviously I’m not black, so I haven’t experienced what you experienced.
But from that patient who said, get all the non doctors out of this room and said, this
black woman, she can’t be a doctor, get her out of this room. And some of the interactions
you had with your teachers, just explain what kind of racism you encountered. And also for
each kind of racism, what should you do?
The way that I like to break down the different kinds of racism. So there’s things known as
microaggressions, which are your daily racial slights, racial grievances that on the surface,
maybe to a desensitized ear, you might not even recognize that it could be something
that’s racially aggressive. Case in point, whenever I would meet a patient or another
medical student, and I was always frequently asked, where were you born? Are you Canadian?
Or are you used to the winters? Like it was just a constant assertion and the assumption
that I was not of Canadian origin that I could not have been born. I must have been born elsewhere.
So this is gatekeeping of the Canadian identity that constantly made me have to explain myself
even at the outset of a medical encounter. And then on the opposite side of that are more
macro aggressive, more intensely obvious, I guess you could say racial grievances where
it was a direct challenging of my intelligence, my capacity, my ability to actually be a doctor.
So as you mentioned, having a patient who had directly said that I had to leave the
room, because I didn’t look like a doctor, even though being repeatedly told that I was
a part of the medical team, and then still the patient actually growing more agitated,
growing more aggressive, because they did not want me in the room, and bearing in mind
that I did not have any training as to how I was supposed to deescalate that situation,
how I was supposed to encounter that situation, although I had specifically asked for that
training prior to my clerkship years. And these kinds of experiences, it really permeated
my medical education, which was an exemplary medical education at the University of Toronto.
However, I was still facing it from so many different angles. So from patients, sometimes
from my attendings, from other medical students, and then when I eventually did my public facing
advocacy, then facing it from the public, which was just an entirely different beast
unto itself.
Now going back to that incident where that patient asked you to or told you to get out
of the room, as I recall, you left the room and you were in tears, and then it was like
a very traumatic tearful thing, but looking back, should you have just stood your ground
and confronted him and taken him on, or what would you do today if that happened?
So I would say that firstly, I want to hold grace for where I was in my journey as a medical
student, and not necessarily having had the tools or the understanding or the insight
into what to do in that moment. And so I did leave the room tearfully. I truly did not
know what I was supposed to do alternatively. Interestingly, I mentioned in the book that
one of the older fellows, medical fellows had came out afterwards and said, “You should
have stayed in the room. That’s what you were supposed to do.” And I think, as I said,
I give myself grace for where I was in that journey. Now, having my MD, being a doctor,
being a resident doctor, if I was in that same situation, what I would do is I would
likely stay in the room, I would likely reaffirm to them and reassure them that I am a physician,
I’m part of the medical team, I am here to help you. And of course, if the patient gets
increasingly agitated, I would then employ the skills that I’ve since learned as to
how to de-escalate that situation. I also think it helps when institutions, when hospitals
have policies that we can actually reflect back to the patient. So this is a teaching
hospital and in a teaching hospital, you have to be seen by the practitioner who is available
and that would be myself. And if it got to the point where I felt that my safety was actually
in parallel or that I was about to be physically harmed, of course, I would go and get the
appropriate resources to help that’s around there as well. But I think where I am now
is very different than where I was then all those years ago.
You are clearly a better person than I am. There’s no question about that. I don’t know
if I would have done that. I can think of a lot of things, but grace would not be the
top of mind for me in that situation. So you became active after a decision to turn them
down, but you changed your mind for the Black Student Application Program. Could you just
explain that to me because this was something to increase the recruitment of Black students
to your medical school. And I think it went from one out of 259 to 14 a year later or two
years later, right? So now, what exactly? Because you made a very clear point that even if you
did this Black Student Application Program, the academic rigors were the same. So what
did the program do? What was the goal?
So the goal in a nutshell was to increase the number of Black applicants applying into
the MD stream at the University of Toronto. And what it aimed to do was to ameliorate
some of the biases that were inherent within the application program system. And so what
they did is that they required that the applicant write an additional essay. So the way that
U of T usually works for its stream to apply to medical school is that it requires you
to write a series of short essays. About eight was what I had to write when I applied to
medical school. And so for this stream, they required you to answer an additional question.
Now I’m unsure if that exact question has changed over the years, but what it was back then,
which is why did you feel it was important for you to apply through this Boxing Application
stream? And how is it that your identity may impact your medical training and things such
as that? And that was incorporated, but then it was also incorporated that a Black file
reviewer or a member of the Black community, Black academic community, Black medical community
would be involved in reviewing your application as well as the actual interviewing process.
Now that was very different for me because when I was in the process of applying to medical
school, I actually vividly remember the day of my U of T medical interview, which I talk
about, I write about in the book where I enter and it’s just a sea of medical school candidates.
And of course, the anxiety and the sweat is like palpable in the air. And I walk in and
there’s just no other Black applicants. There were no Black invigilators. There were no Black
interviewers either as you went from station to station. And there’s about four stations,
12 minutes per station. And so when you’re going into these spaces and nobody looks like
you, you’re naturally going to just be aware of that. At least for myself, I was naturally
attuned to that, especially having been in so many places before where I was only a Box
student. And so what a difference it makes to actually be able to alleviate some of the
implicit bias that can be present within this system. And that’s what the Boxing Application
Program aimed to do and continues to do and has made a significant impact in the educational
environment, not just for the Black students, but for all students, the diversity of thought,
the diversity of lived experience, the diversity of culture enriches the educational and the
medical educational environment for everyone.
And do you think that some of the students are still thinking, oh, this is a Black student,
so it was less academically rigorous. There’s a quota system. It’s unfair. It’s reverse
discrimination. Do you think that still happens there?
I am sure that there are individuals who may question whether or not, you know, another
Black student had merited their spot. I think that is, again, a vestige of racism. And I
know that as I was in medical school, I was fielding that remark constantly, constant
questioning even on my very first day of medical school, day one, just the morning before my
stethoscope ceremony, someone asking me, did they make it easier for you to get in here?
Did you need lower grades? You’re the only Black student. So did they do something to
make it easier for you? That was before BSAP was even instituted. And so I am sure that
there may be individuals out there who are thinking these thoughts or feeling these thoughts
because these are the thoughts that have pre-existed the BSAP program. However, I can assure you
that intelligence, the tenacity, the ambition of these students, of these Black students
going through, it will rival any other student who was there, any other student. And I just
actually gave the convocation keynote for the class of 2024. And this was the largest
class of Black medical students in Canadian history that came into the University of
Toronto. And they had just graduated this past year. And guess what? The number two student
out of the 260 students that got the second highest grades across all four years was a
Black woman. And I think that that stands as a brilliant example of the fact that we are
not diluting the collective intelligence of the class. No, no, no, no, no. These are the
students who we would have lost to the American schools. And this is true. I actually, when
I was doing my first year of mentorship for the BSAP program, so when I was still a second
year medical student talking to these other students, encouraging them to apply through
BSAP, many of them were saying, I got a scholarship to Yale. I have a scholarship to Northwestern.
I have a scholarship to these places in the States that have already been doing these
kinds of programs and systems, encouraging Black medical students to apply or Black students
to apply to their medical school. So we were going to lose them when, in fact, now we are
retaining them. We are retaining this talent, the brain drain. We’re slowing it down. And
so I don’t agree at all with anyone who questions the intelligence of Black medical students.
Well, just to set the record straight, didn’t you become the valedictorian of your class?
I was elected. I was selected by my class to be the valedictorian of my class. And that
is an honor that I wear with so much incredible pride and responsibility. And I write about
this in the book as well because it was almost ironic because in literal definition, the
valedictorian is supposed to reflect the class. So it was ironic because I was so different
from the rest of the class that it speaks and that my being selected speaks to the transcendence
of the work that I was trying to accomplish, the transcendence of who it is that I am and
what I embody, which is truly embracing your audaciously authentic spirit, embracing what
it means to be a physician, what it means to be an astute medical student, someone who
genuinely cares for other individuals. These things are transcendent. And I’m really so
grateful that my class appreciated that and saw that and that I was able to have that
incredible opportunity.
Speaking of transcendent, I am asking you now to tell the story of your interview and
when you were in the interview and you’re prepared for every possible question except
when you opened the door and told the interviewer that you participate in slam poetry and he
asked you to recite a poem. I must say I’ve never heard of that in any application interview.
So please tell that story.
Absolutely. I feel like most people can relate to that experience when you’re entering into
an interview. And certainly if you’re interviewing for a professional school like medicine, these
interviews, you feel like you have spent your entire life working towards this one moment
that feels so decisive for the trajectory of the rest of your life. And so through militant
fashion in the weeks preceding this interview, I had done an archeological dig throughout
my entire life. And I literally had a notebook that was very thick and it was highlighted.
It had every single detail down to what was going to make me a brilliant medical student
and a brilliant doctor thereafter. And so when I was in that interview room and we had
spent it’s about 12 minutes per room, and we had spent maybe eight or so minutes going
through my resume talking about all the different things, my research and my extracurriculars
and everything. And we had a couple of minutes left and I thought, okay, now’s the chance
for me like in regular interviews to then turn the tables a little bit and ask him some
questions about the University of Toronto and what it’s like to be a medical student,
what it’s like research within the institution. And so when I thought it was my turn to start
asking some questions, and then he looks at the final line of my resume and he saw that
I’d recently competed at the Canadian Festival, spoken word and was nationally ranked. I placed
as one of one of the finalists with my team, the Hamilton Youth Poets. And so he looked
at it and he said, Oh, you’re a performance poet. Interesting. So I’m in the company of
a nationally ranked poet. Why don’t you perform something for me. And that moment, the sheer
terror that just blitzed through my body of my spine. I was like, Oh my gosh, I had not
rehearsed a poem in several months. That was end of January was that interview. And I had
not competed or been on a stage since October of the previous year. And I’d actually put
myself into semi retirement because it was so exhausting preparing for nationals that
I did not want to do any poetry at all in the interval. And so in that moment, I had
to make a quick calculation of am I going to share a poem because I knew I had my entire
repertoire of poems memorized, you have to do that if you’re going to be a professional
poet. So I knew that I could execute it. I just had to think quickly what poem would
he want me to share. And he said, you know, do your best poem. And immediately I thought
of my poem skin, which talks about my experiences of being in my skin as a black woman and navigating
the world in my blackness and in my femininity and all the different things. And the interviewer
was a senior white male cardiologist at the University of Toronto, at least on the surface.
Very different from me with regard to all of those different aspects. And so I didn’t
know if this was going to land with him. I had no idea what his political inclinations
were. I had no idea what his value systems, I had no idea. But in that moment, I decided
to take what I now call an audaciously authentic stance. And I was going to share it. So in
that moment, I shared with him, my skin is like dark ebony under the blazing sun. Won’t
you tell me that I’m beautiful and don’t preface it by telling me the limiting conditions
of my beauty. And I remember thinking after I gave him about probably a minute or so of
that poem, pausing when the bell rang out. And it was just me and him and I like came
back into my body. And it was just this moment of horror of looking at him like, Oh my goodness,
I can’t believe I just said all of that to you. Did I completely blow my medical dream
and medical ambitions? And he was like, that was amazing. Listen to the rest of it. And
it was the biggest exhale of relief I’ve ever done in my entire life, my whole life.
And did you call your mom or your sister and say, guess what I just did in my interview?
I had to recite skin or whatever. I called my mom because my mom was waiting with bated
breath to see how my interview had gone until I called her and I said, Mommy, I got to perform
in my interview and she’s perform perform. Why? Why were you performing? He asked me
to perform the poem and so I performed it and he loved it. And I think that might have
been my ticket into medical school. I don’t know how it is, but I think if anything, it
was incredibly symbolic because I always say that being a better poet, a lifetime of being
a poet, a writer has been the best preparation for me to be a doctor. And so I just think
it was very symbolic that in my medical school, in a read the most decisive moment of my life,
he asked me to perform poetry.
So back up a second and tell me, what does being a poet have to do with being a doctor?
Why is that a prep for you? It is everything that the two are so interdigitated for me.
And that’s because at the basis of being a good doctor and at the basis of being a good
poet is about being a good human. It’s about holding tight to your humanity. And what poetry,
what a lifetime of poetry has taught me to do is to have this unflinching examination
of the human experience. That’s what poets do. We always hear about the tortured poet,
the sad poet, the tortured creative. And that’s because poets analyze the world, all parts
of the world, even the parts that make us feel heartbroken, the parts that are devastating.
That’s typically where we get the best poetry. And we have to be able to do that unflinching
examination. And then on the flip side, when it comes to being a physician, what it requires
of us, especially within psychiatry, is being able to sit in some of the most heartbreaking,
other-stating, unbelievable situations, holding people’s hands through the darkest hours of
their lives, and being able to sit with them in that, to guide them through that, to be
able to continue with our critical and analytical minds throughout these kinds of situations.
And so I think that poetry has been this beautiful transference of that. But then also at the
same time, being a performance poet on top of that, taking my poetry and then giving
it to the world, that in and of itself is an act of transcendence. That has enabled
me to be able to connect with other individuals, to have conversations, much like in my medical
school interview, that might be difficult to have otherwise. Some of the hardest things
I’ve ever shared with the world, I can only do through poetry. And so that, again, has
enabled me to build this ability to not only be compassionate, but to be vulnerable. And
I take these skills and I translate them to my role as a doctor, and I truly believe that
that’s what has enabled me to be the best doctor that I can be.
So hundreds of girls are going to be listening to this podcast. I’m going to say I’m going
to study poetry so I can be a doctor.
Oh, I love that. I love that. Step one, be an amazing poet and then step two, be a doctor.
Up next, on Remarkable People.
My stance is still relatively unchanged from then because I know that the debate is so
incredibly heated and that I do have that appreciation for patients and for families
and for individuals who do believe and can see and have that perspective that there is
a point where mental illness cannot be treated and there is a point where the suffering of
what it is that they are experiencing should not be continued.
Welcome back to Remarkable People with Guy Kawasaki.
So I have to ask you a question that I have not asked any other guests and we’ve had about
260 guests, which is how does one become a Barbie role model? I just need to know that
just in case they call. So how do you do that?
It was really interesting because I got the email from Barbie. Well, through my then agent,
I was running around the hospital and I was actually a few months pregnant and then I
got the email that they wanted to make a Barbie out of me for the Barbie role model and I’m
still stammering because it still seems so surreal. I’ll never forget being in the hospital
and seeing the title, the subject line of that email and thinking, there is no way that
this is real and then realizing that no, it actually very much was real and then going
through the process. So the Barbie, Mattel, Canada, they’ve gone through their very extensive
vetting system and determining who would be the right candidates and I was selected to
represent Canada for their healthcare heroes campaign. And so this was in 2021 and they
had selected six women around the world to be Barbie role models and have Barbies made
after them and I was selected to represent Canada. And so I went through the process
with Mattel to actually create various prototypes of what I wanted my Barbie to look like. So
I was very involved in the actual creation of it and going through different iterations
and I sent them different pictures of me with different hair cells, different angles. It
was really cool to see the behind the scenes and then as they continued to tweak and create
different versions of the Barbie until it was just right. And then being able to unbox
it and actually see it in the flesh on national TV, it was just the most surreal experience.
It still doesn’t feel like it actually happens. And whenever people tell me you have a Barbie,
I’m like, Oh my gosh, I do have a Barbie. It’s the most incredible thing though. I have to
say that getting a Barbie doll may be more prestigious than a MacArthur Fellowship. I’d
have to think about that. Although I don’t think you got paid a million dollars to be
a Barbie role model. Is your doll still current? Can somebody go to Barbie.com and order the
cheek of doll? I wish. So it’s actually a one of a kind Barbie doll. So I have the only
chica say so real. Oh, I know. And I’ve been asked in the last three years by hundreds
if not thousands of people, where can I get this Barbie? And so Barbie actually does have
a black female doctor that they do sell. And so it’s not you. But no, it’s not my Barbie.
I know and it makes me so sad because I wish I could give out more of the Barbie doll that
I have. It’s incredible. But for now it’s, it’ll be played with by my son and my daughter.
And hopefully they don’t pull her head off and torture her.
It’s like getting an Olympic gold medal, right? We’ve had Olympic gold medalists on this podcast
and they often tell me, I don’t even know where it is. I think it’s in my drawer or
is it in the bathroom and like Brandy Chastain, where’s your Olympic gold medal? I don’t really
know.
I definitely know where she is because my husband who is far more not that he’s more
proud of my accomplishments, but he is really, really proud of my accomplishments. And so
he has encased the Barbie in this glass like cylindrical casing and has put her inside
of another glass case. And so she is displayed within our kid’s playroom. So like I will
always know where she is. But yeah, that is something that for me, like I guess you could
say that’s my Olympic gold medal is my Barbie doll.
And when you get selected, do you have to go on a national tour or is like being Miss
America or something? Or what do you have to do?
So it was interesting because this was also during the pandemic like this was when I received
the Barbie, it was August, early August of 2021. So I don’t know if things would have
been different if it wasn’t right in the thick of things. And I was also five months pregnant
when I received the Barbie. And so luckily I went to a few new stations and because I’m
in Toronto, everything was broadcasted nationally from Toronto. And then a whole blitz of media
came to my home, which I felt very fortunate for being five months pregnant and just being
able to, you know, walk down the stairs and oh, the media is here. I don’t have to go
too far. But it was an incredible experience. And so it was definitely cross country and
then also international because I got to do some bigger media and reach out to different
countries. And so people from all over the world were hearing this story. And that was
a really phenomenal experience.
So in the final model of this doll, how was your hair styled?
So I wanted to ensure that the Barbie was as authentic as I was and that she had a big,
beautiful afro, afro textured afro. And I wanted to ensure that it was as a booming and voluminous
as possible. And so if you look at the Barbie, it’s three times the size of the Barbie’s
head, which is hilarious. And when I do have my afro out, my afro really is quite voluminous
and beautiful. And so I wanted to ensure that the Barbie was a reflection of that. And it
certainly was.
Oh, I love that. If you think about it, and if you can remember, please send us a picture
of that Barbie doll so we can use it when we promote this episode. Because this is such
a great story.
Absolutely. I can send you the official Barbie photo.
So someday if they make a Barbie doll out of Madison, we’ll be fully prepared to know
what to do.
Yes, I can show her the Barbie ropes, the plastic ones. I can show her all of that.
I have one really serious question. And then I have one more question and you’ll be done
with me and you can go back to saving lives and writing poetry. So the serious question
is, you talk about a time where the students had to have a debate about the moral issues
of medical assistance in dying for the mentally ill. And I would love to hear what you have
to say about that. Having practiced psychiatry, should the mentally ill have the access to
medical assistance in dying?
So that is a very serious question for sure. And I wrote about this in the book, as you
mentioned, and this was actually for my residency interview day. We had to write about this.
And I shared in the book an experience, now this character is fictionalized to protect
patient confidentiality, but I share about the experience of a woman who I had met who
had faced a lifetime of serious treatment resistant mental illness, such that the point in which
they perceived their life was no longer one that was sustainable. And I wrote about that
experience when I talked about this question that we were posed with, whether or not someone
with mental illness should be granted access to maid. And in that stance, I talk about if
we want to treat mental health as serious, and as potentially devastating as ailments
within physical health, then does it not require us as physicians to then realize that there
can be mental illnesses that reach a point that are beyond treatment? And at what point
do we recognize our responsibility as doctors is not always ultimately to extend a life
but to actually protect the sanctity and the dignity of the individual who is experiencing
this illness. And I say all of that to say that I guess my stance is still relatively
unchanged from then because I know that the debate is so incredibly heated, and that I
do have that appreciation for patients and for families and for individuals who do believe
and can see and have that perspective that there is a point where mental illness cannot
be treated. And there is a point where the suffering of what it is that they are experiencing
should not be continued. And so I can appreciate that perspective. And then I can also see
the ways in which as psychiatrists that the field of psychiatry as a psychiatry resident
as a future psychiatrist, also the argument that it is our job to continue to extend the
life of individuals. It’s our job to continue to try and always improve the mental illness
of certain individuals that it might be a fleeting moment in which you believe your life is no
longer worth living, but can we potentially explore other options? And so I say all of
that to say that I don’t know if I’ve necessarily landed on a concrete answer, but it is something
that I do reflect on and have reflected on very deeply for a long time.
Okay. I lied. I actually have one more question after my final question. So my final question
and I want you to talk about your book and all that stuff, but pretend that you are addressing
young girls and they’re listening to this podcast and just give them the best advice
that you can based on your life experiences.
Oh, I love this question. What I would say to them is to never forget the power of your
voice and to use it even if your voice shakes, even if it’s a whisper, to never forget the
power of your voice and that you get to define who it is that you are, the strength that you
possess, the journey that you are on, and not to let anyone else grab the pen from your
hand and write the story of your life. You will always be the author. And so to continue
on that journey is so incredibly important and it starts with recognizing the beauty
of what your voice is. And so that’s the message I would love to relate to any young woman
listening to this podcast.
My God, you are just a fountain of poetry. I could ask you what time is it in Toronto
and it would come out as a poet. My God. Okay, promise you, this is the last thing. This
is the last thing. So we interview about 52 people a year. So we’ve done this for about
five years. So we’ve interviewed 250, 260 people. I’ve read a lot of books. I’ve seen
a lot of videos, but you had a line in one of your videos and I want to hear you say
it. Now, okay, I sure hope you remember this line because it was so memorable to me. I
hope you can remember it, but I’ll give you the gist of the line. The gist of the line
is that no need to reply. My hope is only to edify. And I thought, oh my God, that is
such a great statement. So as the last thing you do for us, could you just say that line
that stanza that I hope you haven’t memorized?
Yes, I do. It’s actually from my poem, Love Letters from My Body, which was a very vulnerable
and raw exploration of my experience with disordered eating from the ages of 19 to about
23. And I talk about that once again in the book, but this poem explores that. And so
the stanza is from that. So I can absolutely recite that line and maybe a line or two after
that. I’m just going to bring this as your medical into it.
Yay, really?
And I’m asking you to perform.
Yes. Okay. Dear Chica, she wrote, no need to reply. My hope is only to edify the wonders
that you are. When you search for meaning amidst the twilight stars, I hope you know
that the answers were always at your fingertips. You were equipped with a mind that could
steer ships lips that could part the seas promise me that you’ll never forget that you’re nothing
short of a miracle. And when you move your feet, it is lyrical. So keep dancing like
no one is watching. And if you feel the need to syncopate your joy, I will deploy a series
of letters, scented with lilac written in gold detailing the light that you hold from
me to you to us, trust that all you need to do is listen to this body.
Oh my God. Holy shit.
Sorry, I just needed to get into it. I knew I had it with me. Thank you for my…
You’re a Barbie doll and I’m not my among other reasons. But yeah, that was just remarkable.
Thank you so much for being on our podcast and you definitely have brought a great deal
of joy and light and laughter to me today. And I’m sure everybody listening to this.
So thank you so much. Oh, just tell us the name of your book because we want people to
read your book. I read it and I loved it.
Oh, thank you. And I just want to say that it has been an absolute joy and pleasure to
speak with you today and my book is called Unlike the Rest, a Doctor’s Story by me, Dr.
Chica Stacey Oriwa, and it is available wherever books are sold and also at your favorite online
retailer.
See, even your sales job is a poet. I’m going to have you do like marketing for me and my
books. I would love that. I’m going to get you and lovey and I’m going to own the Nigerian
market.
If you can introduce me to lovey, that would be the coolest day ever.
Listen, like I said, I only know two Nigerians, you and lovey. And based on that rather statistically
invalid sample, oh my God.
I will say we are pretty cool people. We are pretty remarkable people. You’re sample size,
although very small and it’s still pretty.
And John M. Chu, if you’re listening to this and you make a movie called Crazy Rich Nigerians,
you credit me for that idea, okay.
Absolutely.
All right, so this has been Remarkable People. I’m Guy Kawasaki. I hope you enjoyed this episode
as much as I did. And you learn about racism and dealing racism and reducing racism and
hopefully eliminating racism.
And if you’re a patient and you see a black woman come in to treat your room, you should
thank your lucky stars. That’s the doctor. That’s clearly what I learned today.
So I just want to thank the rest of the Remarkable People crew. That is, of course, the Remarkable
Matters and Nysemer producer and co-author Jeff C. and Shannon Hernandez, who are doing
all our sound design.
And finally, Tessa Nysemer, our ACE researcher, who helped me find all these great questions
for Chika.
And now we’re going to let you go and we’re going to let you go to your kids and your
husband and your patients and your poems and all that. And congratulations for a life well
lived. And you’re so young. Oh my God. Someday when you’re a prime minister or whatever
it is of Canada, you’ll remember me. Okay.
Thank you, Guy. This has been a hard time.
We’ll go to Tim Hortons and have breakfast.
Yes, I will treat you. I’ll treat you to a breakfast better than Tim Hortons. But yes,
I will treat you.
All right. Take care. Bye bye.
This is Remarkable People.
Step into a world where poetry meets medicine and authenticity breaks barriers. Guy Kawasaki shares an unforgettable conversation with Dr. Chika Oriuwa, a groundbreaking physician, poet, and advocate who made history as the only Black student in her class of 259 at the University of Toronto Medical School. Together, they explore her journey from being a nationally ranked slam poet to becoming a pioneering doctor and Barbie role model. Dr. Oriuwa shares powerful insights about transforming medical education, embracing authentic leadership, and using poetry to enhance patient care. Discover how she’s reshaping healthcare while championing diversity and inclusion in medicine.
—
Guy Kawasaki is on a mission to make you remarkable. His Remarkable People podcast features interviews with remarkable people such as Jane Goodall, Marc Benioff, Woz, Kristi Yamaguchi, and Bob Cialdini. Every episode will make you more remarkable.
With his decades of experience in Silicon Valley as a Venture Capitalist and advisor to the top entrepreneurs in the world, Guy’s questions come from a place of curiosity and passion for technology, start-ups, entrepreneurship, and marketing. If you love society and culture, documentaries, and business podcasts, take a second to follow Remarkable People.
Listeners of the Remarkable People podcast will learn from some of the most successful people in the world with practical tips and inspiring stories that will help you be more remarkable.
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