“My name is Tani, and my family likes to say I like to ask a lot of questions. They’re right. I like puzzles. I like riddles. I like trying to figure out why things happen and how things work.
But things have been different lately. Instead of asking the questions, I’ve been the one trying to answer them. A lot of people have wanted to know all kinds of things about me and my life. They want to know what life was like for me and how I feel about the way things have changed. They want me to tell my story, and I want to tell it, but there’s never enough time to say everything that’s in my head.
So this book is going to be my answer.”
~ Tanitoluwa Adewumi from My Name Is Tani
Last weekend, Emerson and I had one of our boys-only, weekend chess tournament trips.
This one was to Houston for one of the bigger tournaments of the year: the 90th annual Southwest Open.
On the second morning of the tournament, we took the elevator up to the fifth floor of our hotel with a boy/young man with GREAT energy who was dripping with sweat. I asked him if he just worked out. He said he had just gone for a 5-mile run. I was impressed and asked him if he ran track at school. He said that he just loved to run. I was even more impressed.
When we got out of the elevator, Emerson told me that he thought that awesome kid was a chess prodigy named Tani. As it turns out, that awesome kid WAS Tani—one of the greatest young chess players in the country whose story is truly Heroic.
We ran into Tani again later in the tournament and I told him how much we’ve loved watching him on ChessKid with FunMasterMike as we celebrated his pre-match protocol and chatted about Emerson’s. In addition to that morning run, Tani does 20 push-ups before each match and was impressed that Emerson does 33 burpees before every one of his matches.
Then I grabbed a picture of him and Emerson to capture that special moment—knowing that in 5-10 years it will be really fun to look back at these two great boys who are committed to being Chess Grandmasters. (Check it out here.)
I knew Tani had a book, so I immediately got it. I basically read in one sitting. I also knew that his story was inspiring but I had NO IDEA it was as incredibly inspiring and Heroic as it is.
This book captures that story. It’s written by Tani, his mom Oluwatoyin (who we also met in the elevator that morning) and his dad Kayode (rhymes with coyote!) along with Craig Borlase.
The SUPER-abridged, one-line summary? Tani is a Nigerian refugee who won the New York State K-3 Championship while living in a homeless shelter.
It’s hard to put into words JUST how inspiring the book is. We’ll discuss the details in a moment but I was in tears throughout much of it. I HIGHLY recommend it. Get a copy of it here.
The book is packed with wisdom and I’m excited to share some of my favorite Big Ideas, so let’s jump straight in!
P.S. We recently featured wisdom from another great chess player: Maurice Ashley. In *his* great book, Move by Move, Maurice tells us about his Heroic quest to become the first Black chess Grandmaster. We’ll talk about his story a bit more in a moment...
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