Reading the Globe

Marie Mutsuki Mockett's family owns a Buddhist temple 25 miles from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. In March 2011, after the earthquake and tsunami, radiation levels prohibited the burial of her Japanese grandfather's bones. As Japan mourned thousands of people lost in the disaster, Mockett also grieved for her American father, who had died unexpectedly.

Seeking consolation, Mockett is guided by a colorful cast of Zen priests and ordinary Japanese who perform rituals that disturb, haunt, and finally uplift her. Her journey leads her into the radiation zone in an intricate white hazmat suit; to Eiheiji, a school for Zen Buddhist monks; on a visit to a Crab Lady and Fuzzy-Headed Priest’s temple on Mount Doom; and into the "thick dark" of the subterranean labyrinth under Kiyomizu temple, among other twists and turns.

From the ecstasy of a cherry blossom festival in the radiation zone to the ghosts inhabiting chopsticks, Mockett writes of both the earthly and the sublime with extraordinary sensitivity. Her unpretentious and engaging voice makes her the kind of companion a reader wants to stay with wherever she goes, even into the heart of grief itself.

Marie was born and raised in California to a Japanese mother and American father, and graduated from Columbia University with a degree in East Asian Languages and Civilizations, where she wrote about female shamans in Japan. She received her MFA from the Bennington Writers Seminars.

Her most recent book, “American Harvest: God, Country and Farming in the American Heartland,” is set in seven agricultural and heartland states, and was published in hardcover by Graywolf Press on April 7, 2020. “American Harvest” won the 2021 Northern California Book Award for General Nonfiction and the Nebraska Book Award for Nonfiction. A novel, “The Tree Doctor,” is forthcoming from Graywolf Press, along with a series of essays titled “How to Be a Californian.” Her recent work continues to focus on the intersections of race, place, faith and the natural world, with a special interest in city versus country, “modern” versus old, and East and West.

Her memoir, “Where the Dead Pause and the Japanese Say Goodbye,” explores how the Japanese cope with grief and tragedy and is set against the backdrop of the 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster in Tōhoku, Japan and her family’s 350 year old Buddhist temple. The memoir was a New York Times Editors Choice, a Barnes and Noble Discover Pick, an Indie Next Pick, a Finalist for the 2016 Pen Open Book Award, a San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of 2015 and a Finalist for the Indies Choice Best Book for Adult Nonfiction for 2016.

This program is made possible in part by a grant from Humanities Texas, the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.