Leonie Owiredu
Leonie Owiredu is a writer and graduate of Harper Collins’s Author Academy for Children’s fiction and is working on her debut YA novel. She works as a digital editor and cultural strategist.
Design by Ingrid Frahm
When I was four years old, I turned up to school in uniform on a day I wasn’t supposed to. I went to the school’s front desk and asked to call my dad to have him bring me my favorite outfit, a can of 7UP, and some sausage rolls. It was a brazen request that came from an assurance that my dad would always be there for me. When I was a bit older, and he fell ill, I believed that he would survive. My dad wasn’t supposed to die. He was supposed to walk up to the front of the congregation at our church to give his testimony of his survival. Everyone would stand up and join in praising God for such a miracle. When my dad died, it didn’t feel real. At 14, I had no direct encounter with death, nor did I know the weight it held in my culture. As the 10-year anniversary arrives this year, I’m still trying to figure it out.