Voice of Reason

When you’re a Zen Buddhist priest as well as a novelist, the teachings of Buddha have a way of creeping into your writing.

Just ask Ruth Ozeki ’80, a Smith English professor, ordained Zen priest, and award-winning author of four novels.

In her latest, The Book of Form and Emptiness, 13-year-old protagonist Benny Oh hears voices—not just the voice of his recently deceased father but also the voices of all the inanimate objects surrounding him, from a spoon to a pair of shoes.

“The ‘emptiness’ in The Book of Form and Emptiness is not despair,” critic Helen Shaw wrote in New York magazine. “Instead, it’s tied to the Buddhist teaching that the isolated, independent self is a fiction. Another book might treat voices like aberrations to be hushed; Ozeki multiplies them until we’re more sensitized to their presence.”

THE BOOK OF FORM AND EMPTINESS: A NOVEL
By Ruth Ozeki ’80
Viking, September 2021

This story appears as part of the Smithies Create column in the Winter 2022 issue of the Smith Alumnae Quarterly.

Photograph by Danielle Tait