Louisa Onomé is a Nigerian Canadian author who also writes for video games. Her published books include ‘Like Home’, ‘Twist as Perfect’, ‘The Melancholy of Summer’, ‘Pride and Joy’, and her young adult graphic novel, ‘Revenge Arc’, is coming up in 2026. With a BA in Professional Writing and an MA in Counselling Psychology, she lives in Toronto, where she obsesses over her favourite video games and perfecting her skincare routine. In this interview by HALIRU ALI MUSA, she speaks about her Nigerian-Canadian heritage, her book ‘Pride and Joy’, and other literary and cultural issues.
Could you tell us about your Nigerian-Canadian dual nationalism and how it shapes who you are today and inspires your creative work and writing?
I was born in Canada and grew up around a vibrant Nigerian community here in Toronto. It’s funny looking back now, because, as a kid, I thought I could clearly pick out the parts of my upbringing that were Nigerian and the parts that were Canadian, but I realise that wasn’t the case. My parents raised my siblings and me the best way they knew how, and they were raised in Nigeria. So, it became the way we did things. The food we ate, the things we learned were all coloured by what my parents did, ate, and learned in Nigeria. It definitely shapes how I see the world, too. I don’t see a huge need to define things so rigidly, because I’ve seen the beauty in what happens when you allow people and things to exist and create and grow. My work tends to be very expansive for that reason.
At what point did you realise and decide to become a career writer? What was your first novel about, what inspired you to write it, and how did you manage the challenges of publishing it?
I had always wanted to be an author, ever since I had realised that it was a job a person could have. I was about seven or eight when I came to that realisation. I wrote a lot of fanfictions as a kid and teenager, which was very helpful for developing my voice and style. It was around the time I graduated from a post-secondary programme that I decided to get serious about turning it into a career. I wrote several manuscripts that went nowhere, but they helped teach me how to take feedback and apply it.
My first book, ‘Like Home’, a young adult novel about gentrification in a Toronto suburb, was published in 2021. I was inspired by the neighbourhood I grew up in near Toronto, as well as how friendship can change over time. My biggest challenge around that time was learning how to evaluate and apply feedback — I had an idea of what I wanted the story to look like, and I had to balance that with professional input. I learned a lot throughout the process.
Let us talk about your latest novel. ‘Pride and Joy’. In your interviews, you have mentioned that “laughing is really no different than crying — they are both ways the body expresses emotions.” The novel brilliantly balances dark humour with genuine sorrow. Can you talk about the challenge of finding that tonal balance, especially in scenes like the midnight vigil, where nothing happens, or when Immaculate livestreams the “resurrection” event?
For me, that tonal balance exists in life and in how I see the world. I’m not a very serious person, which tends to surprise people when they meet me, and because of that, it feels a bit easier for me to feel at ease between the two. In those scenes in particular, I think what was most important for me to convey was that the situation is inherently ridiculous. Once that’s been established, it’s easier to play around with how individual characters are feeling, and those are much more complex than the ridiculousness of the whole situation.
At the midnight vigil, there’s a divide between feeling hopeful and feeling foolish. And I think that’s a great way to look at life in general. We feel hope, but then we feel foolish for hoping, but then we can’t do anything but return to hope again. So, it’s a cycle.
You have said that writing many characters was challenging — keeping track of everyone and what they were doing. How did you manage or overcome this challenge while writing this novel? What made you decide to tell this story through multiple points of view (POV) rather than staying solely with Joy?
It was definitely challenging, but a welcome challenge, since I knew that I wanted this story to maintain multiple POVs. It was important for me to show how the family units that I am used to operate. It’s not just the parents; there are cousins, aunts, uncles, and even family friends that make up the family unit, and I think there’s a lot of beauty and strength in that. To me, it represents that this sort of story — any family story, really, especially dealing with stories with Nigerian or African characters — can’t really be told from a solitary perspective, because our family dynamics are so intertwined. Growing up in Canada, I really see how special that sort of dynamic is, and how it’s not a dynamic that a lot of people have the privilege of experiencing.
How did shifting between adult perspectives (Joy, Michael, Rob, Nnenna) and the children’s viewpoints help you explore grief differently?
It helped me describe and showcase it from different angles, which I think is very important when dealing with a big emotion like grief. We expect it to look one way, usually the way it’s depicted with adults. But many of us first experienced grief as children, so to ignore a child’s perspective would be counterintuitive. After all, the things we experience as kids stay with us through adulthood. So, really, an adult’s viewpoint on grief is often seen as the perspective they experienced as a child.
The Mazi Jaja séance scene is one of the most powerful moments in the book — where Christianity merges with Igbo traditionalism and ultimately reveals Michael’s true parentage. Is faith, spirituality, and the supernatural things you like exploring in life and art? And what were you hoping to achieve with the relationship between African spirituality and Christianity in the diaspora?
It’s definitely something I’m very interested in. I grew up in a Christian home, though I myself am not religious. I think there is such beauty and power in our ancestral practices, and I’ve always been interested in the supernatural. Having the merging of faith and spirituality in this way is a reflection of the ways in which I’ve seen traditionalism merge with Christianity in my upbringing. It’s not a cut-and-dry thing. It always felt more fluid to me, and that’s what I’ve been intrigued by.
I can’t say that I was hoping to achieve anything in particular, but just to highlight that this relationship exists. For myself, and many other Nigerians or Africans who feel a bit stuck within the confines of Christianity, it was important to show that faith can look like so many different things.
In the novel, Joy worries that her son Jamil knows more about his Italian heritage than his Nigerian roots, which speaks to a broader anxiety about cultural transmission. You have mentioned maintaining your own cultural ties through food. Beyond food, what other “cultural anchors” did you want to explore in the novel, and how do first-generation children navigate this dislocation?
I’ve found that this sort of thing is different for many first-generation children. I know many people who don’t have a connection to their language and not much connection to their food, and they’re fine with it. But I’ve met others who feel a restlessness that they have trouble defining. I find myself somewhere in the middle, and that’s what I wanted to explore here. I’m a big language nerd. So, for me, having a strong touchpoint with my parents’ languages would have been amazing. Since that isn’t the case, like Joy, I’ve had to remind myself that that doesn’t diminish my heritage, though it can be a struggle at times, as it is for many first-generation kids.
You also said you are “a huge fan of unlikeable characters” and enjoyed writing characters who “didn’t always behave the greatest.” Characters like Nnenna, Auntie Nancy, and even Joy herself make choices readers might find frustrating. Why was it important for you to write flawed characters rather than sympathetic ones, and what do you hope readers take away from their imperfections?
It was important for me to write flawed characters because people are flawed and no one ever behaves “correctly”, 100 per cent of the time. It’s impossible. We should be able to see our humanity reflected in characters who sometimes behave in a frustrating manner, because that’s the reality. We all handle things differently, and there is nothing wrong with that.
Sometimes, we feel we’re going to behave a certain way, but then the reality of the situation hits, and we lose our footing. That’s normal, and for that reason, I enjoyed writing Nnenna’s character. She tries to uphold the image of the perfect pastor’s wife, and in doing so, she starts to crack.
I’ve known a lot of people who work hard to uphold an image that just isn’t true or is more trouble than it’s worth. My goal with this was to show that you don’t always have to perform for others.
In the novel, Auntie Nancy’s insistence that Mama Mary will resurrect — prompted by a vision involving a brown cow — transforms an intimate family tragedy into a public spectacle. Beyond the literal plot device, what does this “resurrection” represent for each family member? Also, beyond the book, would you advise people to believe in prophecies?
Such a good question! For the Okafor kids, Joy and Michael, the resurrection represents frustration. They have already been through a lot, losing their sister and father. So, to them, the spectacle is quite cruel. For their cousins, Rob and Nnenna, it’s a lot hollower. They don’t know where to put their feelings, since everything feels so up-in-the-air, and they don’t know how to best emotionally support their cousins. For the rest of the family, I’d say the resurrection ranges between amusement and excitement, like on Christmas morning (for the kids, especially), and terror (for someone like Uncle Ezekiel). I don’t know about you, but I’d be terrified if someone said my relative was coming back from the dead. I don’t know if I would believe it.
I can’t say whether someone should or shouldn’t believe in prophecies, but I’m very amused by them. I’ve been subject to the “I’ve just had a dream…” conversation with my mom and with several aunties over the years. So, I’ve never felt like they were especially harmful. Like I mentioned before, while not religious, I’m a spiritual person, so I do think there’s something to be said for spiritual communication. I’ve certainly had dreams where it felt like I was instructed to do something, and I always felt the pull of either doing it because “well, what if it’s true?” or not doing it and feeling apprehensive.
The revelation that Michael is not Mary’s biological son arrives late in the novel and completely reframes his relationship with the family. What made you decide to structure the book this way — building toward this secret rather than revealing it earlier? How does this discovery tie into the novel’s larger themes about what makes a family?
I decided to have it later in the book because it felt like a buildup would be more appropriate for the story. I needed something that would shake the foundation of the family so that it could be rebuilt on a more honest platform. Michael leaving the house to clear his head and Joy’s insistent need to keep everyone together speak to the themes of grief as well. Earlier in the book, Joy accuses Michael of always running away when there was something they should face together, and having him repeat the same pattern was symbolic. It’s only when he comes back and they are able to reconcile do they have a moment to truly grieve, not only their mother, but the old foundation of their family.
You have mentioned that in your family, your mom is Ika and your dad is Isoko, and you wanted to include tribe diversity in the book with the Okafors being Igbo and Nancy’s husband being Yoruba. For non-Nigerian readers who might not understand these distinctions, can you talk about how tribal identity functions in the Nigerian diaspora versus in Nigeria itself, and why it was important to show this complexity?
I can only speak to the diaspora and my own experience, but my parents always spoke about tribal identity as a second family. I imagine it’s different when you grow up around people from the same place as you, but that wasn’t the case for me. So whenever my parents met someone from one of their towns, they would always introduce them as, “This is so-and-so, and they are Isoko” or “… and they are Ika”, and it felt like a way of acknowledging that this was a family member abroad. I think it’s sweet.
In the book, I wanted to highlight different tribes simply because it’s important that we aren’t seen as a monolith. Because of Nigeria’s popularity worldwide, there are many people who are familiarising themselves with “Nigerian culture”. But I’ve found some of the things people bring up to me aren’t necessarily broader Nigerian culture, but Yoruba culture or Igbo culture, etc.
What were the challenges you faced writing the novel, and how did your literary agent and publishers perceive it when they first encountered it?
To be honest, I didn’t encounter many challenges when writing this. It was a lot of fun, and I’m really thankful that my agent and publishers thought so too. In fact, one of the main pieces of feedback I received from my agent was that the story wasn’t sensational enough, so I went back and added more things to make it feel bigger.
Both my agent and my editors were super supportive throughout the process, which was great, because I feel as if I really got to write the exact story I wanted to.
Apart from writing, what do you do for a living in Canada? What three things do you miss about Nigeria while in Canada?
I’m a writer all the time, most recently writing for video games, which was a lot of fun.
I’ve only been in Nigeria a handful of times, but I miss my grandmother and the rest of my family who don’t live in Canada with me. The food here also tastes richer. I’m a little obsessed with Chicken Republic.
