In An Unusual Grief, Yewande Omotoso tenderly unpacks the complexities of mourning, motherhood, and identity through the story of Mojisola, a woman navigating the death of her estranged daughter. Recently longlisted for the Nigerian Prize for Literature, the novel offers a quiet, powerful meditation on how grief can also be a beginning.
In this conversation, Omotoso shares what inspired her to explore grief from the lens of estrangement, the layers of womanhood she uncovered while writing, and the questions she hopes readers will continue to ask long after the final page.
What drew you to explore grief through the lens of estrangement?
I recall a friend losing a parent and suffering. What struck me was they were not on good terms with the parent who’d died. The suffering was so acute. While one hesitates to make comparisons it did strike me that perhaps their suffering was increased by the estrangement, the incompleteness, the unsaid. I am in general obsessed with this – the unfinished – and wanting to tackle this thing of completing that which – because one party is missing – will never really be completed – the conundrum of this. I wanted, like an experiment, to test it out on a character in this case Mojisola, and see where she could get to with it.
Mojisola’s journey is as much about loss as it is about reinvention. What did you discover about identity, especially womanhood while writing her story?
Identity is slippery really, because as it contains it also excludes. Maybe an easy, almost cliche but also accurate comparison is the skin of a snake or animals that grow and shed skins. Perhaps that’s the best way to “wear” identity. Mojisola is really a study in stuckness and unstuckness. Her journey through the book is the unsticking, the shedding and growing another skin and I suppose, shedding again and so on.
If you were a silent observer in a discussion about An Unusual Grief, what part of the story would you be most curious to hear readers debate?
I’d love a discussion on BDSM.
What does An Unusual Grief making the longlist for the Nigerian Prize for Literature mean to you personally?
Any and all recognition a book one puts out into the world receives is edifying for what is truly a quiet, slow (in my case) and profoundly (often beautifully but also disconcertingly) solitary task. That any one notices! This recognition in particular just really warms me up. Of course there’s a prize (a particularly generous one!) and a winner but the longlist itself has really filled me up. I am ever grateful for the acknowledgement and say a big “thank you”. I feel so encouraged. And it’s lovely to be part of a cohort of writers who are celebrated and beloved, that’s its own special honour.
What do you hope readers take away from this book?
I tend to write without a strong sense of prescription in terms of “take away” or morals. Or at least with loose prescriptions. I want, always, readers to be moved. Because I’m a reader and I know what it feels like (and what it’s felt like throughout my childhood and life) to read something possibly by someone I will never meet and never know and be profoundly touched by it. This feeling for me is like a human code, an inexplicable connection and it is so restorative, it propels so much of what is good in life. I want to contribute to that feeling. Another loose prescription is the deliciousness of surprise. I love to be surprised when I read, versus reading and thinking “I know it already”. And I don’t mean surprise as in a “whodunnit” mystery novel kind of sense. A turn of phrase can surprise, a small seemingly insigficant detail about a character can surprise. Being surprised regularly in life (and gently) can be really good medicine for the soul.
For a deeper immersion into the emotional landscape of the novel, explore the playlist that evokes the book’s themes and accompanied Omotoso while writing.
An Unusual Grief is now available for pre-order, secure your copy and experience this powerful story firsthand.
