Author discusses cultural differences in new novel

Traditional tea ceremonies in Japan require an acute mental and physical connection to the… Traditional tea ceremonies in Japan require an acute mental and physical connection to the art of serving a cup of tea and a whole lot of stamina to maintain a Zen-like state of satisfaction for the four-hour meal that comes with it.

Ellis Avery, author and professor of creative writing at Columbia University, studied these ancient ceremonies for five years in New York and Japan and implemented the knowledge she gained into her newest book “The Teahouse Fire.”

Avery read excerpts from her book in a room filled with guests of Pitt’s Cultural Studies Program. The event also included authentic Japanese sweets, French cheeses and classic American Pepsi.

Avery focuses her novel around Aurelia, an American orphan with a French name who moves to Japan when her mother falls ill and her minister uncle moves to the island seeking to convert its people to Christianity.

The novel begins with Aurelia, but it becomes the story of the Japanese woman who teaches her and others the highly revered art of the tea ceremony. For this reason, Avery said she sees Aurelia as the story’s sidekick.

Throughout the reading, Avery made references to the St. Clare medallion that Aurelia wears around her neck.

“I chose St. Clare because I began my novel in Assisi, which is named for St. Francis, and we were very drunk one night and toasting St. Francis and then someone said, ‘And to St. Clare! His sidekick!’ And I thought, ‘Perfect! The patron saint of sidekicks!'” Avery said.

Much of “The Teahouse Fire” chronicles the cultural divide between the American Aurelia and her Japanese teacher.

“She learns the way things are done there,” Avery said of Aurelia. “Like the way you remove your shoes before you enter a house, or the way fashionable ladies shaved their eyebrows.”

Mastering instances of the language barrier in writing was an easy process for Avery because she writes with experience.

“I studied the tea ceremony first, and after a year, I studied Japanese because I really wanted to know what my classmates were saying,” she said. “It wasn’t intensive, but I learned enough that I think I could capture the sense of being ignorant of a language.”

An American living in Japan herself over a seven-month period, Avery said, “I remember this kind of Helen Keller moment when I was listening to the radio [in Japan] and I thought, ‘Oh my God! They’re listing the fullness of all the municipal parking lots!'”

Though the novel is set to be translated into Spanish, Portuguese, Polish, Romanian, German and Dutch, Avery said she’s not sure it will be printed in Japanese.

“I hope it is one day, because when I told my Japanese friends about it, they said, ‘I didn’t know this! Why didn’t I know this?’ and they sounded very interested,” Avery said. “They could have just been being very polite and condescending, but I don’t know.”

She feels the novel also might lose some of its appeal in a Japanese translation because “a Japanese friend of mine that read it said that Japanese readers might find it boring because there’s so much explanation about the tea ceremony and most of them have been there, done that,” Avery said.

“I loved her for saying that. So I think that means it won’t get translated.”