Faith, family, loss and love: Louisa Onome’s Pride and Joy

May 2, 2024May 2, 2024 Arpita Ghosal

Marking her transition from young adult to adult fiction with the recent release of her novel Pride and Joy (HarperCollins Canada, 2024), best-selling author Louisa Onomé continues to use lively comedy to explore themes of family, identity, community and the immigrant experience.

“Time really flies!” she marvels, recalling our last conversation for SesayArts about her debut YA novel Like Home. (Read the interview here.) In the intervening time, she has “been busy at work with two more YA novels that released since then”: Twice As Perfect, about a Nigerian-Canadian teenager trying to fill emotional gaps in her family after her elder brother disappears; and The Melancholy of Summer, about a functionally homeless teen girl who gets a second chance after moving in with her celebrity cousin.

These novels paved the way for Pride and Joy, which is a gripping, funny and decidedly adult novel that is once again deeply embedded in the cultural and spiritual dynamics of the Nigerian-Canadian community. “For me, it was all about showing how things like faith and spirituality mix with culture – and which aspects are acceptable, and which aren’t,” she explains. This exploration underscores the diversity in approaches to spiritual and cultural identity: “I know no two Nigerian families will do things the same way, but I’ve always found it interesting how different aspects of spiritualism play into our culture in ways that may not always fit nicely in a traditional religious setting.”

Pride and Joy is woven around a family gathering that is punctuated by a birthday celebration, an unexpected death, and a potential resurrection. Set in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), The story unfolds over a weekend intended to celebrate matriarch Mama Mary’s 70th birthday. However, plans take an unexpected turn when Mama Mary suddenly passes away. Her sister, Auntie Nancy, refuses to accept her death, insisting that since Mama Mary died on Good Friday, she will rise again like Jesus Christ on Easter Sunday. This leads the close-knit family into a tumultuous, near-farcical wait for a miracle.

The story is focused Mary’s daughter Joy Okafor. A recently divorced life coach, she meticulously plans the birthday event, only to find herself navigating the complex emotions of her family’s denial and her own unresolved grief. As relatives arrive and the community becomes involved, the family’s private ordeal turns into a public spectacle, adding layers of comedy and chaos to the deeply emotional narrative.

Addressing the universal theme of grief within a comedic framework was a deliberate choice for Onomé: “My perspective is that life is naturally funny, if we allow it to be, and humour is a great tool to help process emotions. Grief can be so heavy, and I think the assumption is that when someone is grieving, they must be sad or depressed all the time.” But in her narrative, Onomé explores how grief, like joy, can manifest in myriad forms, including laughter: “Laughing is really no different than crying. They’re both ways the body expresses emotions.”

Onomé’s writing is rich with humour and pathos, and vividly portrays both Nigerian culture and the first-generation immigrant experience in Canada. And while the story centres loss, it celebrates the resilience of family bonds and the personal growth that can emerge from grief. This premise resulted from Onomé’s deeper exploration of religion and spirituality. “I think I’ve always been interested in faith in some ways,” she says. Although she did not grow up “super religious (though it was definitely presented as the only option)”, she is drawn to the different ways spirituality can present, including within religion.

Among the characters populating Pride and Joy, Onomé feels a special connection to Jamil, the son of her protagonist Joy. Jamil, who is navigating grief for both his grandmother’s death and his parents’ divorce, was the most challenging character to develop. “I found he required a lot more effort to write” so he did not seem too aloof or disconnected, Onomé admits. “He cares a lot, but it comes out in small ways. And I paid a lot of attention to that because I wanted it to feel believable.”

Cover image courtesy of HarperCollins Canada

Onomé won’t spoil it, but admits that she is especially proud of the ending of Pride and Joy: “It’s such a nice, grounding moment with the whole family, and it touches on spirituality, religion, and culture in a really nice way”. It also brings full circle her writing process: “Oftentimes, before I finish writing a book, I have the last lines in my head, and I kind of write towards that. Pride And Joy was no different. I really wanted that simple greeting—’You are welcome here’—to be the final thing that was said.”

As Onomé prepares to appear at the Festival of Literary Diversity (The FOLD) on May 4, 2024, her work stands out not only for its leap-off-the-page portrayal of lively characters, but also for its striking blend of sobering themes with levity and depth. Her novels reflect the complexities of cultural identity, balanced with the universality of human emotions.

And with Pride and Joy, she tells adult readers, “You are welcome here”, and invites them to mourn, laugh, reflect, and perhaps, find a piece of themselves within the pages.

Louisa Onomé appears with fellow Brampton, Ontario authors Alina Khawaja and Jael Richardson in “Brampton Books in Bloom: Celebrating 50 Years in Flower City” on May 4, 5:30 pm.

Read our interview with The FOLD’s Founder and Executive Director Jael Richardson on sesayarts.com. For the full schedule of events at this year’s FOLD, visit TheFoldCanada.org.