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My Year of Meats, by Ruth L. Ozeki
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A cross-cultural tale of two women brought together by the intersections of television and industrial agriculture, fertility and motherhood, life and love—the breakout hit by the celebrated author of A Tale for the Time Being
Ruth Ozeki’s mesmerizing debut novel has captivated readers and reviewers worldwide. When documentarian Jane Takagi-Little finally lands a job producing a Japanese television show that just happens to be sponsored by an American meat-exporting business, she uncovers some unsavory truths about love, fertility, and a dangerous hormone called DES. Soon she will also cross paths with Akiko Ueno, a beleaguered Japanese housewife struggling to escape her overbearing husband. Hailed by USA Today as “rare and provocative” and awarded the Kirayama Prize for Literature of the Pacific Rim, My Year of Meats is a modern-day take on Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle for fans of Michael Pollan, Margaret Atwood, and Barbara Kingsolver.
- Sales Rank: #29349 in Books
- Color: White
- Brand: Penguin Books
- Published on: 1999-03-01
- Released on: 1999-03-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.00" h x .60" w x 5.00" l,
- Binding: Paperback
- 400 pages
Features
Amazon.com Review
At first glance, a novel that promises to expose the unethical practices of the American meat industry may not be at the top of your reading list, but Ruth Ozeki's debut, My Year of Meats is well worth a second look. Like the author, the novel's protagonist, Jane Takagi-Little, is a Japanese-American documentary filmmaker; like Ozeki, who was once commissioned by a beef lobbying group to make television shows for the Japanese market, Jane is invited to work on a Japanese television show meant to encourage beef consumption via the not-so-subliminal suggestion that prime rib equals a perfect family: TO: AMERICAN RESEARCH STAFF
FROM: Tokyo Office
DATE: January 5, 1991
RE: My American Wife!...
Here is list of IMPORTANT THINGS for My American Wife!
DESIRABLE THINGS:
1. Attractiveness, wholesomeness, warm personality
2. Delicious meat recipe (NOTE: Pork and other meats is second class meats, so please remember this easy motto: "Pork is Possible, but Beef is Best!")
3. Attractive, docile husband
4. Attractive, obedient children
5. Attractive, wholesome lifestyle
6. Attractive, clean house...
UNDESIRABLE THINGS:
1. Physical imperfections
2. Obesity
3. Squalor
4. Second class peoples
The series, My American Wife!, initally seems like a dream come true for Jane as she criss-crosses the United States filming a different American family each week for her Japanese audience. Naturally, the emphasis is on meat, and Ozeki has fun with out-there recipes such as rump roast in coke and beef fudge; but as Jane becomes more familiar with her subject, she becomes increasingly aware of the beef industry's widespread practice of using synthetic estrogens on their cattle and determines to sabotage the program.
Cut to Tokyo where Akiko Ueno struggles through the dull misery of life with her brutish husband, who happens to be in charge of the show's advertising. After seeing one of Jane's subversive episodes about a vegetarian lesbian couple, Akiko gets in touch and the two women plot to expose the meat industry's hazardous practices. Romance, humor, intrigue, and even a message--My Year of Meats has it all. This is a book that even a vegetarian would love.
From Library Journal
As a writer, Ozeki draws upon her knowledge in documentary filmmaking cleverly to bring the worlds of two women together by utilizing the U.S. meat industry as a central link. Alternating between the voices of Jane (in the United States) and Akiko Ueno, the wife of Jane's boss (in Japan), Ozeki draws parallels in the lives of these two women through beef, love, television, and their desire to have children. Ozeki skillfully tackles hard-pressing issues such as the use and effects of hormones in the beef industry and topics such as cultural differences, gender roles, and sexual exploitation. Her work is unique in presentation yet moving and entertaining. Highly recommended for general fiction collections. [BOMC alternate selection.]?Shirley N. Quan, Orange Cty. P.L., Stanton, C.
-?Shirley N. Quan, Orange Cty. P.L., Stanton, CA
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Jane Tagaki-Little is a struggling documentary filmmaker who is overjoyed to get a steady gig producing a Japanese television show, My American Wife, sponsored by BEEF-EX, a lobby group for the meat industry. As she travels through the Midwest looking for guest hosts for the show--" wholesome" housewives who embody American values and make mouthwatering recipes (e.g., beef fudge!)--she gets an eye-opening look at the meat industry and their unwholesome practices. Using the TV show to launch a subversive attack, Jane's next and most popular segment features vegetarian lesbians. Meanwhile, the wife of the Japanese rep for the show dutifully watches the program, but what she learns from the American families presented is that she does not have to settle for a brutal, loveless marriage. Ozeki's first novel has some fine touches, including a pleasing prose style, the feisty, independent protagonist, and her modern relationship with her attractive musician boyfriend. However, in striving for complexity, Ozeki overloads her narrative with too many issues (e.g., fertility, wife battering), and her intermittent diatribes on cattle ranching bring her story to a screeching halt. Ozeki is no Upton Sinclair, but since our new national pastime appears to be bashing the meat industry (move over, Oprah), this quirky novel will no doubt find an audience. A major publicity campaign will help: the book is a BOMC alternate selection, and Ozeki, herself a documentary filmmaker, will be doing a 10-city reading tour. Joanne Wilkinson
Most helpful customer reviews
55 of 60 people found the following review helpful.
such a great beginning, only to deteriorate into ground beef
By A Customer
It is quite rare for me to be so completely enthralled and delighted by the 17th page of a book, and one from a debut novelist to boot. Which is why my disappointment at the appallingly bad last half of the book is so acute.
First, if I had to rate the first half on creativity, humor, style, etc. I would surely give this book FIVE stars. Ozeki is a beautiful writer, the phrases and descriptions are exquisite and delightful.The humor sharp, acerbic. In particular, the depiction of cultural clashes between the Japanese crew in America was extremely funny and well-done. Much insight, real honesty and real verisimilitude. And the segments on American families--beautiful, glorious, heartwarming.
But what happened?! As I moved toward the end, my grief was palpable: I cringed. I wailed. I wanted desparately to go back to the beginning. For me, everything went downhill after the silly relationship with Sloane. The main character Jane, who WAS so brash, funny and aggressive, starts to become wimpy, wishy-washy and clueless in the arms of Sloane. Should she have the baby or not? Should she commit to this guy or not? It became a case study of post-feminist angst and it tired pretty quickly.
Secondly, what happened to all those three-dimensional characters? While I agree with the author's views on the beef industry, the characters came off as fake, superficial and cliche. Evil cattle rancher. Busty, young stripper-wife of cattle rancher. Evil wife-beating Japanese man. Timid Japanese housewife. She pits heroic, "good" stock characters against the "bad" cardboard villains of the beef industry. For e.g., the quiet. principled truck driver Dave who points out all the evils of the slaughterhouse seemed less like a solid character and more like a convenient plot device to get the anti-beef lecturing across. Akiko and John start off as delightful characters who also disintegrate into a syrupy soap opera cliche. Ultimately, Ozeki insults our intelligence by not letting us make our own decisions and does an injustice to the characters she originally created; the effect is as jarring and disturbing as a cattle prod.
That was the main problem of this novel. It started off as cynical and witty, but couldn't escape from sentimentality and a need for self-righteous closure. Bunny, Rose, the lesbian couple, etc. all cram themselves in to fit into a plotline that is more ideological rant than art. Ozeki backs off from her challenging narrative to give us a nice, fake bow at the end--somuch like TV! Despite the "hard-hitting documentary" style she professes, Jane (and Ozeki) are really just ... for the "happy ending." That means constructing a villain (the beef industry) at the expense of a good story. Even the graphic violence and bloodiness of the beef industry she tried to gruesomely convey, is all just conveniently part of a sugary-syrupy plot in the end. After Jane loses her baby, reunites with her lover, comesto terms with her Japanese mother, I felt like throwing this book into the offal and refuse of the cows she was describing--BUT not because it was bad! In fact, the first half could be described as 'brilliant'. But because this book let me down so much. That is an even bigger betrayal to me than to have written a bad book from the start. What could have been a promising debut has deteriorated into the plot of a soap opera with an ultimately dissatisfying ending.
17 of 18 people found the following review helpful.
Much more than just meat
By karolinatx
I, too, greatly enjoyed My Year of Meats. Though the "meat" side of the novel was impossible to miss -- it is, obviously, crucial to the plot -- I found that it had very little to do with what made the book so enjoyable. I'd seen the book around in bookstores for years, but never bought it because I thought that I had the meat industry covered, having read Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. Don't make the same mistake I made! My Year of Meats is SO much more. Jane Takagi-Little is a documentarian who accepts an offer to make a series of half-hour shows for Japanese television entitled "My American Wife!" and sponsored by the American beef industry. She takes the opportunity to do more than simply showcase beef, repeatedly breaking orders from Japan and filming the most unusual and intriguing "American Wives" she can find -- a couple in Louisiana who have adopted Asian children, and even vegeterian lesbians! In the process, Jane learns a lot about the beef industry, and begins to plan to subversively expose the shocking details meat-eaters would rather not know. Unlike some other reviewers, I didn't find this part of the novel to be excessively preachy; it fit in with the plot nicely. Along the way, the reader also learns about Jane's private life and what makes her tick, fleshing out her character nicely.
On the other side of the globe we have Akiko Ueno, the wife of one of Jane's bosses. Through her eyes the reader is able to learn much about the Japanese culture. Akiko is abused by her husband, who she was set up with by her boss and married out of obedience. Eventually the lives of Jane and Akiko intertwine with fascinating end to the novel. Set to exquisite sections of The Pillow Book, My Year of Meats is a captivating read.
15 of 16 people found the following review helpful.
Funny! But ultimately too self-indulgent.
By Jonker
I stayed up late to finish this book, and have heartily recommended it to friends. But I do have to give a mixed review.
First and foremost, it was one of the funniest books I've read in a long time. At one point, I started laughing out loud (to my horror -- I was reading on the subway and no doubt looked like an idiot). I also thought the literary device of uniting the Japanese and U.S. portions of the story through those great faxed memos was clever. The whole thing just felt fresh and creative. Simply put, I really enjoyed reading this.
On the other hand, however, by the end of the book the development of the story and the characters had pretty much given way to heavy-handed moralizing about the meat industry, or at least the author's perception of the industry, which I suspect may be a bit exaggerated. Perhaps exaggeration is the primary flaw here. The characters were exaggerated to an extent that caused me to distrust the author and discount her perspective. And did we really have to be bludgeoned quite so hard with the Wal-Mart as Evil Empire theme? Finally, I thought that the way all the diverse characters and episodes tied together into a big happy ending was unduly contrived.
Despite these points, my final impression is that it was a gripping, worthwhile, and memorable read, and I will be watching for Ms. Ozeki's next book.
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