Melissa Harris-Perry: Welcome back to The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry. In real life author, Emiko Jean, has been an entomologist, florist, and teacher, and now she's released a new novel, Mika in Real Life. Mika is a second-generation Japanese American woman who's disappointed her mother too many times to count. Mika's given up her passions, can't keep a job, and her love life is nonexistent.

At the depth of all this messiness, Mika gets a call, it's the daughter she placed for adoption 16 years earlier. In this new novel, Emiko Jean explores what it means to heal from our traumas and how we all need second, third, and sometimes even fourth chances. Now, you've actually done a fair number of really interesting other kinds of gigs before becoming best known as a writer. Can you talk about some of those roles?

Emiko Jean: Yes, it took me a long time to find my destination. I started as an entomologist. I worked in a zoo for a long time as a bug person. I was a candle maker for a while. I was a florist. I eventually went back and got my master's degree in teaching, and I was a teacher for a while. Throughout all of those jobs, I loved writing and I would write in the evenings. It just took me a while to figure out that's where I was meant to be.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Is there some link between entomology and candle making? I'm wondering. I get the teacher to the author, but I'm wondering about what part of your brain or passion or spirit is connected in all of those.

Emiko Jean: It's interesting. Now that I look back and reflect on it, I can definitely see what was happening. I grew up in a very small town that was mostly white. I'm Japanese American, and I was placed in that box where I thought that because of my race, I should pursue a career in science or math.

Really, inside, I was a really creative person, but I had never really seen any other Japanese Americans in creative spaces, especially in publishing and in writing. I really believed that I suppressed that part of myself for a long time because I was trying to catch this stereotype. Once I gave myself permission to pursue art, it really opened up things for me.

Melissa Harris-Perry: In many ways, the story you just told, even about yourself, is about giving yourself permission for some second or maybe even third chances, and that's so much at the core of this book as well.

Emiko Jean: Yes, I actually didn't realize that until another reviewer pointed it out to me. In the book, Mika, the main character, is an artist, and she quits pursuing her art because of a series of things. I didn't recognize that that story was similar to my own. Like me, Mika struggled to find herself as an artist and her voice as an artist, even long before her traumatic event which leads her to quit painting. Her art instructor asks her, "What is your story? Your story is your power." That's a question that I've asked myself along the way, and I've found that to be very applicable in my own writing.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Let's talk a bit about Mika and about messy sheroes. Say a bit more about her.

Emiko Jean: Mika is a 35-year-old Japanese American woman, and her life is a mess. She's not where she thought she would be, and she's at her lowest point when she receives a phone call from Penny, the daughter she placed her adoption 16 years prior. Mika, faced with her own inadequacies, tells Penny a tiny white lie about herself. This quickly snowballs into a fully-fledged fake life. Things take a turn when Penny decides to surprise Mika with an in-person visit, and Mika is forced to take this fictional life and make it a full reality for Penny.

Melissa Harris-Perry: As you talked about giving yourself permission to become an artist, to not have to lean into very particular stereotypes, and in this case, a non-white messy shero who is also doing a lot of important, I think, work here around rejection of model minority myth.

Emiko Jean: A lot of my work revolves around what it means to be a yellow body in America, and it means so many things. In this book, I really wanted to explore and deconstruct the model minority myth. Mika is very much a subversion of that. She's messy and never has been a high achiever, and she's not quiet. She's failed, but she's not a failure at life. I think she's struggled to find her way.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I like that distinction between failing, maybe even failing repeatedly versus being a failure. Is that particularly hard for women to capture?

Emiko Jean: I think so. It's interesting with this book, it explores that question of like, who we are in real life. I think as women, we wear a lot of masks, and especially in this digital age, we create these personas and these brands for ourselves. It is very easy to become lost in that and to feel a lot of pressure from outside forces.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Talk to me also about the pressure so many mothers feel to be a good mother.

Emiko Jean: What is a good mother? That's the question. When I had my own children, I reflected on that a lot. What makes a good parent? I, honestly, don't know. I think we're all just doing the best that we can, but I did feel that judgment and that self-castigation on my journey towards motherhood. Becoming a parent, I feel like, is the worst and best thing that can happen to a person.

After I became a mother, I underwent this physical and emotional and mental change that was at once very terrifying but also thrilling. I had these people in my life that really enriched it, but at the same time, I was very scared and very daunted. In some ways, Mika felt very inadequate. I didn't understand what to do. I didn't know how to do it. Even though there is so much out there about being a mother, it always felt like I was finding my way in the dark.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Talk to me about how Mika finds some handrails, some flashlights in the darkness to find what mothering can be for her.

Emiko Jean: Mika has a very complicated relationship with her own mother, Hiromi. Because of that, Mika's shrunk in life, but she has been able to find a family. She has a support network, she has her very good friends, and she really sought out that unconditional love with her friendships that she didn't get from her mother. From that support, she was able to grow into this and find herself in motherhood and figure out that she was enough and that she could be a mother to Penny.

Penny is a girl that's been adopted into a white family. Although the family loved her very much and tried to meet her cultural needs, there was an absence there. She really had this mission to find her birth mother, but also to find her culture and connect to our heritage. I think that's why she has such a great relationship, not only with Mika but with her biological grandmother, Hiromi, who also wants to share and pass down things culturally.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Emiko Jean is author of Mika in Real Life. Thanks so much for taking the time to talk with us.

Emiko Jean: Absolutely. Thank you.

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