But the woods clearly served as a place of beauty, refuge, and curiosity for Satomi. She presents the kind of childhood we might expect-adventurous and spirited-as she describes roaming the forest near her home searching for bamboo despite the warnings that the forests were filled with demons and monsters. The novel intrigues readers from the outset as Satomi depicts her childhood in a small Japanese mountain town in 1954. Satomi is a brilliant pianist and Rumi is a sharp and intuitive Asian art dealer who can hear the histories of art pieces just by looking at them. “They would be modeled on the Japanese women I knew,” she states, “and not the flimsy, suffering-but-beautiful stock characters I’d run into in so many historical novels written by Western authors.” Indeed, the three central characters in the novel-Satomi, her mother Akiko, and Satomi’s daughter Rumi-are all brimming with intellect, strength, and astonishing talents. She took the same approach when developing the female characters in the novel. Some context: When Mockett set out to write this compelling work, she aimed to offer readers a few narrative surprises while also presenting Japan as more than simply a land of “temples and tea.” She had hoped to offset the dominant Buddhist images that define perceptions of Japan in Western countries, and portray a culture that is diverse and complex. The story challenges readers to reconsider their perceptions of Japan and Japanese women in Asian American literature, to accept both the beauty and chaos of the nonhuman natural world, and to ponder how far the painful reverberations of sibling rivalry can reach.
Marie Mutsuki Mockett’s “Picking Bones from Ash” is a rich and unraveling novel that spans three generations of women and travels the globe from Japan to France to San Francisco.
Marie Mutsuki Mockett, “Picking Bones from Ash”
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