Renowned author Ruth Ozeki hesitates to call herself a professional writer.
“If I thought that, I’d scare myself off. For me, writing is play,” Ozeki said.
On Sept. 29 in Rose Hills Theater at Pomona College, Ozeki shared her perspective on the writing process and how Buddhism shapes her creative life. Ozeki’s visit, which included a reading from the author’s recent works and a conversation with scholar Michelle N. Huang, was hosted by the Intercollegiate Department of Asian American Studies and the English department, among other programs.
The following day, Huang also led “The Asian American Nonhuman: From Aliens to AI,” a lecture in part based on Ozeki’s work.
Aimee Bahng, associate professor of gender and women’s studies at Pomona, introduced Ozeki. Bahng had first been in touch with the author 13 years ago, though hadn’t met her until now, noting she enjoyed their lively conversation — perhaps this was a rare exception to the saying “never meet your heroes.”
“I feel like I’ve known her work for over 15 years, and she was very much true to the voice I heard through her work,” Bahng said.
Ozeki’s novels integrate personal narrative with interrogations of environmental politics, technology and popular culture. After years of publishing novels, Ozeki’s most recent work is her first short story collection, “The Typing Lady,” which she read from during the event.
Throughout the conversation, Ozeki emphasized the constant need for reinventing her creative approach.
With Huang, she discussed the series of novels that had led the author to eventually publish her short story collection — in particular “Tale for the Time Being,” her most well-known book, which many audience members carried copies of and perused as Ozeki spoke.
In this novel, Ruth, a novelist, discovers the diary of Nao, a 16-year-old girl, that washed ashore during the devastating 2011 Japanese tsunami.
Ozeki spent 10 years writing “A Tale for the Time Being,” which was published in 2013. It took the 2011 tsunami to reshape the book, leading Ozeki to insert herself as the reader in the novel.
“There are certain events in history that are so big that they caused a rift in time,” Ozeki said. “[My husband] pointed out that since the tsunami had broken the real world, I needed to create that brokenness in the fictional world. You break a fiction by stepping into it as a real-life person.”
Ozeki, who began writing at age 40 after working as a filmmaker, said her mistakes taught her how to create the work she was envisioning. Over time, she learned to mine unhappy experiences from a distance.
“I write from remorse,” Ozeki said. “Why [did] that particular incident cause me to feel uncomfortable? I’m able to take that moment and really inhabit it and investigate it.”
“I write from remorse,” Ozeki said. “Why [did] that particular incident cause me to feel uncomfortable? I’m able to take that moment and really inhabit it and investigate it.”
That comfort with the uncomfortable is part of how Ozeki flouts expectations by writing about political issues. While writing Nao’s intense character, Ozeki aimed to balance reality with avoiding unnecessary harm to readers, inspired by her Buddhist beliefs.
“Language is slippery by its very nature,” Ozeki said. “In Buddhism, [it] boils down to do no harm. How do you do no harm in writing? Humor is based on a kind of meanness a lot of the time.”
Animism, the view that non-human entities have a spiritual essence, is integral to Buddhism. Huang noted that animism is inherent to Ozeki’s work, especially to her novel “The Book of Form and Emptiness,” where the book itself serves as the narrator.
“A coherent narrator requires silencing other voices, and your work animates things,” Huang said.
Ozeki’s captivating wit and groundedness inspired the audience to consider the role fiction holds in the world, and provided a perspective on how to carry one’s past into the life you want to live.
Attendee Sophia Wu PO ’28 appreciated how Ozeki experimented with autofiction and self-insertion in her writing, across all its forms.
“I haven’t talked to a lot of the authors of the books that I’m reading, and especially considering the theme of the book is seeing the person behind the writing, this is a really interesting meta-commentary,” Wu said.
Fellow audience member Aabhas Senapati HM ‘27 found that listening to Ozeki prompted him to reconsider the possibilities of fiction.
“[Ozeki and guests] were talking about how they deal with fiction [as] a means to experience and process emotions,” Senapati said. “Although I’ve engaged with it, I’ve personally found myself struggling with fiction.”
Ozeki additionally spoke to how the intensive writing process forced her to reckon with how she perceived her own identity as a scholar and a biracial woman.
Ozeki recalled reading “A Tale for the Time Being” at a gathering of Zen Buddhists as she contended with an internal conflict about sharing her intense work in front of ordained priests. This prompted her to reflect on societal expectations to fit a certain narrative.
“In this culture, we really have a sense that a person should be a singular integrated thing,” Ozeki said. “[But] we contain multitudes, and we need to remember that and be okay with it.”
Ozeki’s journey was a reminder not to get caught up in traversing the expected paths to your dreams, because every detour has a purpose somewhere along the line. Through her insightful words, Ozeki inspired the audience to embrace their multitudes both in writing and in life.
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