There’s an old adage for writers: write what you know. For her debut novel, author Ramona Emerson drew on an earlier career as a forensic videographer and photographer.
In “Shutter,” the main character, Rita, has that same job with one significant difference: she sees the ghosts of crime victims.
Emerson lives in Albuquerque and is also Diné. Her culture, and that of her main character, also play a major role in the book.
Emerson spoke with The Show about how much Rita is based on her earlier career.
Full conversation
RAMONA EMERSON: A lot of things that I experienced doing forensics were very controlled, the kind of forensics I did, I did a lot of video depositions and photography of wounds and video of wounds, things like that. It was very, you know, court case based.
And when I went to a workshop with my husband at APD, they have a yearly workshop that you can go to, and you can learn everything you ever wanted to know about forensic examinations about what the police do, how to process a crime scene.
MARK BRODIE: This is the Albuquerque Police Department, right?
EMERSON: Yeah, this is the Albuquerque Police Department, and I was in the process, the early days of writing the book and I was doing research and I decided to try to go do this workshop. It was 10 years ago that I was doing that.
One of the very first things I learned about was the scene that opens the book and it was an actual case, but the circumstances were different. Of course, names were different, but this case about a woman who jumped from the overpass in I-40 in Albuquerque during a snowstorm, and one of the detectives said something along the lines of, I don't think we'll ever find all of her, and I think it sparked the beginning of that part of that chapter, and eventually that chapter got moved to the front of the book. I'm describing to you the photographs I saw, I am telling you the facts as they were in a fictional way, and I think the entire book goes that way.
BRODIE: How did you think about how much you wanted to and the ways in which you would bring Diné culture into this book?
EMERSON: Well, I knew right away that just the fact that I was writing this book and the book was about death, and that the fact that I had actually worked doing some of the pretty taboo things as far as being a Diné person, working in forensics myself and even attending that class and experiencing that level of death, and I immediately knew that I was going to be writing something that I had to explain because as a Diné person, it's very taboo to talk about death. You don't do it. It's like asking for it. It's asking for trouble, and I knew from the years I worked that I had two belief systems about death because of my job and then because of the way I was brought up.
The fact that Rita can see and talk with the dead or communicate with those who have gone over created a whole another level of taboo for me. I don't do that, but for Rita to do that as a Diné woman is egregious almost, and I knew that from the beginning I was going to have to explain why it was so egregious and why it was bad. I had to talk about Navajo culture, and I had to talk about how we deal with death or how we don't deal with it. And it was a very real and important part of the writing.
So I do talk a lot about death in the book, but I think the story is also about healing, and I think that's something that we as Diné have to do as part of the process of talking about it. The way I was representing Rita as a character is also a good representation of Diné culture and where I came from, even my own community of Tohatchi.
So I had to be very careful about it, and I had to tell a story that my grandma would be proud of, and I think that was something that really guided me as I was writing the book.
BRODIE: Yeah, well, so do you see this book maybe as a starting point for having some of those difficult conversations about things that, as you say, are considered taboo in your community?
EMERSON: I do. I was very concerned when the book came out. It was just days before it was going to be released, and I was very scared about how people would receive it or how they would react to the book, and it was a big concern of mine.
The first two first few events I had out on the Navajo Nation were very positive, and I was surprised. I kept waiting for somebody to chastise me about what I had written about, and I was afraid. But what happened instead, I've had several different events, not only in the Navajo Nation, but also in Albuquerque, about the fact that it is something that we all hide from and we're afraid of.
But it's also something that we need to talk about, and I've had several discussions from people who said that the book really affected them because it forced them to deal with something that they had not been dealing with for a long time. They lost a family member or there was something going on in their lives that they just didn't want to face and that had a lot to do with how they were brought up and myself too — I understand that.
The fact that we were having the discussion and it wasn't something that was punishable or something that would do bad things to us but it was something that we could heal from I think really resonated with people.
BRODIE: In talking to other writers, you often hear from folks from different backgrounds and cultures. In communities, sometimes there's a little bit of hesitancy to let the outside world in on what that community is about, what that culture is about, what the belief system is about.
I'm wondering if you had any of that hesitancy about sort of peeling back the curtain and letting the wider reading world take a look at how the Navajo culture deals with death, for example.
EMERSON: Yeah, and I think that there's a very thin line that you have to tread there, that sharing this thing and sharing the belief system we have is one thing that we can do, but I was very careful not to share everything.
There's a couple of scenes in there where Rita has some time with the medicine man, and I don't really go into detail about what's happening or describe what's going on. I always tell people it's really none of my business. Even on the page it was a scene that was experienced between Rita and the medicine man.
And even as the writer and creator of that scene, it's none of my business what they were talking about, and so I feel like there's some things I will talk about like the details, and it's that framework work I think that we believe in that still, even though I'm talking about something that's pretty taboo in our culture, I'm also doing it on the edges of not talking about things I'm not supposed to talk about.
And it's a very thin line, and I think some people who have written about us who don't come from our culture forget that there are things that we're not supposed to talk about and they talk about it and that's my job is to tell a story without having to cross that line.
BRODIE: You can say it almost without saying it.
EMERSON: Right.
