NORTH OF 40
WORDS BY ABI SLONE
PHOTOGRAPH BY SORELL SCRUTTON
Images from top: Mariko Tamaki, photo by Sorell Scrutton; Skim by Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki (2005); This One Summer by Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki (2014); Harley Quinn: Breaking Glass by Mariko Tamaki, art by Steve Pugh (2019); I Am Not Starfire by Mariko Tamaki, art by Yoshi Yoshitani (2021); Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me by Mariko Tamaki, art by Rosemary Valero-O’Connell (2019); Cold by Mariko Tamaki (2022); Crush & Lobo by Mariko Tamaki, art by Amancay Nahuelpan (2022); Batman Detective Vol.1 by Mariko Tamaki, art by Dan Mora (2022); Lumberjanes: Unicorn Power! by Mariko Tamaki (2017); Wonder Woman: Lords & Liars by Mariko Tamaki, art by Mikel Janin (2021); Supergirl: Being Super by Mariko Tamaki and Joëlle Jones (2018); HULK #7 by Mariko Tamaki, art by Georges Duarte and John Tyler Christopher (2016); Fake I.D. by Mariko Tamaki (2005).
Full disclosure, Mariko Tamaki is my BFF. For reals.
She is a prolific writer who is driven and seemingly unstoppable (knock wood). The first time I saw Tamaki read her work was in the mid-90s, before we’d even met. Two decades later the details are fuzzy, but it was at a cafe at an open mic night in Montréal. She was sharp-witted and unwavering. Nothing has changed.
Over the past 20+ years, Tamaki has created plays, cabaret acts, actions, short fiction, graphic novels, YA fiction, comic books, a short film and episodes of television, both on her own, and in collaboration. And she shows no sign of slowing down. Thank goodness for that.
THE CRONING: Okay, I'm going to start recording and then if anything weird comes up I'll try to remember to turn it off. Here we go. At this stage of life and career, how do you think you handle things differently. Like collaboration. How is working with others?
MARIKO TAMAKI: I think because of working in Toronto, and in the Toronto queer theatre scene, I started doing things that involved an audience, and collaboration, early. I feel like that gave me a baseline of how you should work with others. And I think that I was lucky to get so many different versions of that experience as a young artist. When I first started working in comics, that idea of creating a story with someone else felt like a very natural thing to do. So I feel like that has been kind of a constant.
For me now, it’s about trying to focus on the thing that I'm doing and not the myriad of other anxieties that come up. I am an anxious person and so I try to not let that part of me dominate when I'm writing or when I'm working on something.
TC: Were you always like that?
MT: Oh, yeah. Always.
TC: Were you always aware of it?
MT: No. I mean, I always knew that I was anxious, and I’ve dealt with mental health issues since I was a teenager. That's been a part of who I was. And the longer I've been working in different environments — from being in graduate school to working in comics, both trade comics and graphic novels, and all this other stuff — the more I've realized that it's not just me, that as an anxious person I can bring that to the collaboration. I think the more that you're aware of what's going on, the more you can be conscious of what you’re bringing to the table. And it gives you perspective so that you can say to yourself, ‘Maybe it's not that everybody hates my idea. Maybe I'm just nervous.’
TC: That must change things.
MT: Yeah, I also think that the fact that I started off in journalism and moved to theatre, onto comics meant I always kind of knew where I was, and knew what I was doing. In other places, I may always feel like the newbie and I’m kind of okay with that. It’s an okay thing to not be 100 per cent sure of yourself and what you’re doing.
TC: I think 100 per cent sure and comfortable makes us complacent.
MT: Even making comics now, I think am pretty set in my ways about how I go about things, versus for the TV work where I am trying to pick up on how different people are doing it, and understanding the benefits of all the different ways of doing things. And art is creative, it’s not all systems and practices and methods. It’s supposed to be surprising. It's supposed to dislodge the things that you take for granted.
TC: Are you more comfortable with the idea that that’s what art is now in your life? Or was that a perspective that you always held? Was there anybody that you have worked with over the years that said that, or expressed their creative process that way?
MT: Well, one of my first writing teachers, when I got out of university, was Anne Decter who was a very gut-instinct writer. She had this very loose way of getting you to write, as opposed to thinking about how to write. She was one of the first editors that I worked with.
But I think the opposite has also been true. I remember a theatre director saw a performance that I did with Pretty, Porky & Pissed Off [a fat activist performance group that was active from 1996 to 2005] and she said, ‘It’s great. It's not theatre, but it's great.’ She was so sure about what theatre should be.
Coming from like a queer place, from Buddies in Bad Times Theatre and its extensive history where Buddies combines theatre with a capital T and the cabaret stage, I think for me it just felt like a new thing, like art.
TC: It takes a level of confidence in what you’re doing, or an ‘I don't really give a fuck,’ to be able to just move on.
MT: I think that there’s a good kind of Canadian approach to making work which is, ‘I just want to make this anyway.’ It wasn't like Pretty, Porky & Pissed Off was trying to do theatre. And I didn’t want to be a theatre artist. Even when I started working on my first graphic novel [Skim], I didn’t decide I was going to be a graphic novelist. I just wanted to make it — however it turns out is great, but I just want to try. I feel like there were a lot of people around me like that when I was growing up, who said, ‘I just put this wig on, and then I go and do this thing.’
TC: Have you always been driven to just do something because you wanted to? There’s a reality now as full-grown adults of creating for compensation and survival, but would you create even if it wasn't for money at this point in your life? Have you always been driven to do it?
MT: When I got out of university I got rid of my computer because I decided I wasn’t going to write anymore. I felt like I had tried to do my version of what I like to do as a writer and nobody was interested. So I thought I wasn’t going to do it anymore. I gave away my IBM computer.
TC: I think you gave it to me.
MT: Then six months later, my roommate had a typewriter and I started using that. And then I think you gave me a typewriter and I started using that. When I was in my 30s, I went to graduate school and decided I was going to be a graduate student, and I still wrote. Even though I was desperately trying to be a graduate student and catch up on four decades worth of feminism, I still felt like I had to write something. So I can’t imagine a place where I'm not doing some version of that, even if it's just for me,
TC: Even when you wanted to put it away you couldn’t.
MT: It's very clearly just something that I want to do. That said, I am in the incredibly privileged position of having something that I do make sense in the cultural times that we're in now. And that I've been encouraged to do more of it. Because it wasn't always the case for me, and it's not always the case.
TC: For sure. Many of the things that people are driven to do aren’t encouraged. Do you ever see an end to making? I know, because I know you, that not only do you write, but you also make other stuff all the time. That's you chilling out — making things.
MT: I don't think I’ll ever stop. It’s a compulsion. And it's also a thing that I just really love. I think that I'm afraid sometimes of what would happen if [writing] was something that had to be just for me? And so I'm always doing things that are just for me to remind myself that that's the other crucial part of it.
TC: That's smart.
MT: Well, and it's a compulsion.
TC: Do you find given where we are in our lives, in our mid/late 40s, that there are specific communities we don't have insight into? Like, don’t know what the latest thing is? Song is? Trend is? Eventually, we need more sleep, or we hang out with people in a different way and miss cultural trends. Do you make a concerted effort to stay current or knowledgeable with what the young kids are doing these days, given what you do?
MT: Well, there are two sides. One is the fact that I write books about young adults. I have been told more than once that my music references are not going to cut it. Although I would say that kids today are so much more diverse and appreciate a broad spectrum of music that I certainly didn't have any access to when I was a kid… So, in terms of writing for young adults, the thing that I decided is that I try to be very specific to a thing that I understand, connected to my teenage years, as opposed to trying to understand and be hip with the kids. It’s just not possible.
TC: I read Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me and it was like nothing else I had ever read before in that its cadence and rhythm was out of step with my cadence and rhythm because I am not a young adult. I started it a couple of times to find my pace, within its pace. Well worth it.
MT: In terms of keeping up with the youth of today, I feel like the thing that I probably do the most is watch television. But I don’t know how many teenagers are watching television… As I said, I just stay focused on writing a story and staying true to my experience of being a teenager, which I think is still true today — what it feels like to try to fit in, to try to understand who you are and who you’re supposed to be — those things that are bigger than you.
On the other side, I'm editing this imprint now called Surely Books [for Abrams, to create a place specifically for bringing more queer creators to graphic novels]. The thing that I love about it is that it does put me in touch with some of the younger creators who grew up with me and my peers. They just have a volume of [queer] material that they're inspired by that. I didn't have when I was coming up as a writer.
That has been really amazing to see — what inspired them which you can see through the stories they are telling. And to see [through their storytelling] how much language has changed and is changing. How they're able to twist the stories and do these things with the medium that I am inspired by. I do think as someone who's curating an imprint, I have a responsibility to pay attention to something outside of just the things that I like, or the things that I know.
TC: Maybe I read it, or maybe someone said it to me — always have a mentor that is younger than you are.
MT: That’s the thing that I like so much about comics. Everyone from the librarians to the publishers, there are a lot of people who are younger than me…
TC: Do you think that you'll stay writing YA novels/graphics novels and comics in a more youth-oriented vein as you mature in years? Like is that a space that you really dig and you are comfortable there?
MT: Yeah, I mean, even style-wise I feel like I have moved at a glacial pace towards a more mature aesthetic. I was at a bank once and there was a woman that I assumed was my age [mid-40s] and she was carrying a bunny purse. I was so judgmental and decided I was not going to do that. And I think I created a line for myself for when I would have to stop being charmed by things for kids. I also think that the culture has changed so much around that sort of stuff — that line is much more blurry.
TC: Totally.
MT: I also set a line for myself determining when I would stop wearing my hair in two ponytails. And I crossed that line. I still wear my hair that way. I just like it.
TC: Are there things career-wise that you haven’t done yet, but still want to do?
MT: It’s tricky because I feel like I always want to do something that I haven't done before. The last book that I wrote was a murder mystery [Cold, coming out in February 2022] because I had never written a murder mystery before. And the other thing I want to do is write longer nonfiction because that's intimidating to me. So I want to try to do that.
TC: That is intimidating. I took a giant pause because I'm terrified by that.
MT: Coming from a graduate program, I feel like I'm set up for the kind of work that goes into that. But I also know the kind of work that goes into it. Fran Leibowitz talks about how writing isn't necessarily an ingenue thing. How you benefit from your maturity. And I think I have the patience to do it now.
TC: I think that's why I've never written a book. I am terrified by long-form because it feels like such a commitment.
MT: It is. Novels are a lot.
TC: For me, anything over 5,000 words is a lot. My whole universe is between 120 and 2,000 words. Now…, can we talk about bangs on the record?
MT: Oh, for sure.
TC: Do you feel like you want bangs because you like bangs, or do you feel like bangs are good at this age.
MT: I feel torn about it because I just spent the pandemic growing out my hair. And I'm on the other side of it now. And the grass is greener. I feel like I have arrived, and like I have accomplished something. But I just let something happen over time.
But yes, I feel like bangs are great for covering up wrinkles, as well as eyebrows (which glasses are also great for). I have noticed as I am ageing that my eyebrows have become a thing now.
TC: Like unruly?
MT: Yeah, if I ignore them. I have a memory of my Dad driving, he’s from the Japanese side of my family, and his eyebrows were so long that one brow was breaking away from his face and blowing in the wind coming through the car window. In that moment I thought, ‘I see what’s going to happen.’
TC: I know. One day you think, what is this enormously long hair? On the bang thing, I am days away from getting bangs… again. I tend to get them and then grow them out and then the following year, get them again. But I do so love that they are stylish and useful.
Also, we’re not alone in this. I was watching a show and somebody used a mash-up of the word bang and Botox and that's what it does, it kind of hides your ‘sins’. They can be kicky and playful. They can be intimidating, like an Anna Wintour. Although I don’t think she’s changed her hairstyle in decades.
MT: In most of my 20s and 30s I wore baby doll dresses, so I understand consistency. But things have changed… now I wear pants. Which is major for me. And I feel like nobody is noticing, so I bring it up all the time.
TC: It is a huge thing. Having known you for over 25 years, I’ve seen your style evolve over the decades. At its core, it has remained the same, but elements have changed. There was a brief period where it wasn't the same. It was quieter.
MT: Well, there were a couple of years where all of my clothes came from Torrid so I looked more goth. But right now, I only have one pair of black leggings on the go which is major for me — normally it’s seven.
TC: I feel like in terms of personal style, and just back to the bunny purse, that we go through a period where it’s touch and go in terms of how clothes identify you. Like a coat that I could wear now would age me, but if I wore that same coat 15 years from now, it would be super cool and offer an element of actual youth instead of trying too hard. Do you know what I mean? Like there's this weird grey area I think as we age, where shit is too young, but if you were 70 and you wore that bunny purse you would be rocking it.
MT: I have realized this thing in my 40s — rather than dressing like a whole thing head-to-toe, the key is to just have one of those elements… say a blue cardigan that has yellow smiley faces.
The thing that I like about that one thing that you're wearing is that when I wear that sweater, at least once a day someone's like, 'I love that sweater.’ And you connect with them, they’re on the same sartorial page.
Also, there was a period where I wanted to be thought of as an artist, and part of that was going out into the world looking a certain way. Somewhere around 40, that stopped…
TC: Now you go out into the world looking like what you want to look like.
MT: Yeah. And my shoes don’t hurt, which is the most important thing.
TC: I am so afraid to wear heels again.
MT: When I worked for the theatre company, one day I was wearing these strappy white heels and I walked to lunch with these two other women who were both shocked that I would do that. They were like ‘Look at you. You can’t do that. That looks painful.’ I think that was the last time I wore heels out anywhere. I was just like, ‘Yeah, this is a terrible idea. Let's not do that.’
TC: The first time I ever met [artist] Melissa Levin [who was 14 years older than me], she came to my apartment and I don't know how it came up, but we were talking about how I wore high heels every day, all day long. I loved it. And she said, ‘Oh, that will change. You won’t want to wear them all the time. And you won’t be able to.’ And I thought, who the hell are you? You don’t know anything. Well, she knew.
MT: That's such an interesting thing because I was usually younger by at least five years from the people that I hung out with as a young queer person and I feel like I spent a lot of time being told by people who are older than me that the things that I thought were true were not true. My attitude was overwhelmingly like, screw you. Like that might be true for you, but that's not true for me. And then 10 years later, you think, ‘Oh, no, no, that's a good point.’ The thing that I've tried to take from that is when I hear younger people say things, I just think my opinions in my head.