While reading Marie Mutsuki Mockett's debut novel, PICKING BONES FROM THE ASH, I couldn't help but wonder if she was somehow metaphysically related to Haruki Murakami. There is a depth and accessibility that both authors share. Marie was kind enough to chat with me about her writing process. The M cubed interview below!

JD: You've created portraits of three incredibly vivid Japanese women in PICKING BONES FROM THE ASH. Could you tell us about how these characters came to life for you? 

MMM: A girl keeps seeing the ghost of a woman. The girl is sure she knows who the ghost is and so are we. Except all of us are wrong! The girl then has to figure out why she is being haunted in the first place. This was the original premise of my novel, and from this basic idea, I knew I’d be writing about three women. It also meant I’d be writing about a ghost. 

But ghost stories aren’t really moving unless you care about the people in the story. What’s more, an intelligent reader will see through cheap tricks, so I had to really understand the connections between all the characters to make the novel work. Because the ghost is Asian—Japanese, to be specific—I thought it would be cool if the key to her behavior also depended on understanding her culture. My western character—Rumi—had to have some textbook familiarity with Japanese culture. So I made her an antique dealer, who knew something about Japan, but was going to have to experience the actual place to really understand the ghost she was chasing. 

As the novel developed, I realized I was also really interested in this idea that we as women are constantly told that we can do and be anything—no matter what we look like. But I wonder: is this really true? And what if a woman from a part of the world that isn’t known for celebrating gender equality—Japan—pursued her talents above everything else? What would drive her to do that? What if a woman grew up believing that being talented really was more important than being pretty, and did everything she could to carve out her own space in the world? How would such a woman treat her own daughter? What kind of a mother must she have had? There’s definitely a dark side to the beauty industry. Is there a dark side to the “talent industry”?

 
JD: The metaphysical aspects of your novel were particularly fascinating to me. What are your interests in that area? And how did you find a balance between grounding a generational family tale with some of the more surreal aspects of the book? 

MMM: My Japanese family owns and runs a Zen Buddhist temple in the north of Japan. I spent a lot of time there as a child, stumbling by accident into “the bone room,” where cremated remains are held for people who can’t afford burial plots, and climbing around the hills behind the temple structure. In Japan, most people have Buddhist funerals, and return to temples and priests for regular memorial services. And since priests are so involved in death and dying—and rebirth—they are also necessarily involved with ghosts and lingering spirits. 

I grew up absorbing all of this before I could even really make sense of it. I heard my mother’s cousin chanting sutras at six in the morning. My grandfather would talk about repeatedly meeting the benevolent spirit of a woman when he was out climbing mountains. He knew the secret to exorcism, and used it when necessary. My mother’s cousin, who currently runs the temple, has done the same.  

These are educated, modern people. Their beliefs are reflected in ghost stories, folk tales and fairy tales, much in the same way as a western person might blithely mention “happily ever after” or “knight in shining armor” or “she was such a witch” without pausing to think of the origins of these terms. We are all a reflection of our cultures, and the kinds of stories we grew up hearing and absorbing.  

I would also say that in general, I’m drawn to studies of religion and spirituality—anything “weird”—even though I myself am a rational person. I just think that there is a reason why spirituality in one shape or another continues to mean something to us. I don’t feel that the God versus science debates are really a helpful way to tackle the question of how we all came to be here. A more useful observation of religion would be to say that the toughest problems most of us face—love, grief, suffering—are spiritual. Our wealthy and technological advances don’t seem to make us immune to suffering. So, how can a modern person live with a healthy and realistic degree of spirituality? It seems like a timely and interesting question. And Japan and the US, as two very wealthy and modern countries, seemed like natural places to explore these themes.

 
JD: You received some well-deserved attention for an essay you wrote, which was edited by Adam Gopnik of the New Yorker. What was that experience like? 

MMM: Well, I’d better clarify. Adam Gopnik didn’t edit my essay. He edited the anthology, and I was short listed in the collection, which was a huge honor. 

But the essay—Letter from a Japanese Crematorium—was an interesting career experience. It’s my first essay and, as you noted, got me considerable attention. I went to Bread Loaf because of that essay and had the most amazing time. I participated in a workshop with the fabulous Patricia Hampl, and met many other young writers—like Dolen Perkins Valdez, Heidi Durrow and Ru Freeman—whom I admire. Editors read the essay and called my agent to ask if I had written a memoir. (I haven’t. Yet). 

I’d always intended to be a fiction writer, and the idea that I could also write nonfiction had never occurred to me. It was my agent who told me I should try my hand at an essay after listening to met talk yet again about the intriguing members of my family—the punk priest who drives an American hearse, the long lost illegitimate son of my great uncle who took over the family temple, my grandmother the aristocrat. It was not initially easy to reveal all these things; I am accustomed to the comfort of hiding behind the mask of fiction. 

But here’s one thing I did learn. You know how all writers say: “I made it up. It’s not true”? when they talk about their novels. Well, that is true. And it’s not true. Most ideas come from something. Writing nonfiction makes you very aware of your inspirations and your process.

 
JD: What are you reading now and what can you tell us about your next project? 

 MMM: I’m rereading The Catalpa Bow by Carmen Blacker. Once upon a time, Japan was ruled women—female shamans, and Blacker’s book is the landmark study of this subject. I’ve just finished Dolen Perkins Valdez’s book, Wench, which I highly recommend, and Heidi Durrow’s first novel, The Girl Who Fell from the Sky, which was beautiful. More books by friends are in queue. As for my next project—it will again feature strong, talented and fearless women—and a touch of something magical and strange.  

For more on Marie, visit her website, http://www.mariemockett.com and for more on the craft of writing, please visit http://bangthekeys.com or pick up my book, Bang the Keys

And before we close, I leave you with a question:

How do you work with elements of the invisible, the spiritual, the not exactly rational elements of human existence in YOUR writing?