My Year of Meats
by Ruth L. Ozeki
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Book Summary Information
Author: Ruth L. OzekiEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1999-03-01
ISBN: 0140280464
Number of pages: 400
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Book Reviews of My Year of Meats
Book Review: Not appropriate for children, and not a good book in my opinion
Summary: 1 Stars
I must make a confession before I begin this review: I'm a fairly conservative person. Being this as it is, my ideology clashes in some respect with that of the author's. I shall try to report factually and avoid too much emotional rant, and hopefully explain why I didn't like this book.
* Ruth Ozeki has a good vocabulary and makes clever use of English idiom in certain parts of the novel (e.g. the phrase "intraspecific quibble" when describing use of male gender terminology to refer collectively to people in Frye's Geography book. However, whatever positive effect that this good use of language might have had on me was lost on me after reading the narrator's use of frivolous profanity in describing her love affairs.
* Some of the characters in the book strike me as not being very authentic. Although Ozeki decries the simulacra of the Old West, she unwittingly uses similar simulacra in her own novel to score rhetorical points against the meat industry. For example, Gale Dunn, who is in charge of the cattle at his father's beef ranch, is portrayed as a pervert (quasi child molester), and an outlaw who blatantly disregards the law by injecting cattle with DES so as to fatten up the cattle in pursuit of the almight dollar; that is, until Jane Little shows up and saves the day, as if she were an old Western hero riding into town to finish off the evil villain. In real life, as we know, the good and bad guys don't fit into such neatly defined categories.
* The narrator is so blunt at times that the reader is hardly allowed to even come to his/her own conclusions. This is especially true in the case of Gale; Jane is careful to momentarily divert from the narrative a couple of times just to make sure the reader gets the point that Gale Dunn is scum. At other times, the reader is more appropriately allowed to come to his/her own conclusion about characters (for example, there is no moral analysis given of the OB-GYN doctor who handled Jane's miscarriage, even though he had atrocious bedside manner and minimized her loss of her baby and her feelings).
* Some of the characters, such as the transracial lesbian vegetarian couple, seemed to serve as a literary device to engender political correctness more than anything else. They represented modernity, a liberal view toward societal change, and yet were clean, respectable people.
* Sexual freedom is portrayed in the book as something that is just fine; although one can see the relationship dysfunction that results from Jane's frivolous sexual relationship with Sloan, the narrator Jane never comes to this conclusion (although she does decry rape and sexual violence, to her credit).
* The portrayal of Christina Bukowsky and her family did lend itself toward modesty as the young lady transformed Jane's cameraman and her soundman into more sensitive and caring individuals (they apparently even gave up their pornography habit after meeting her); however, any moderating influence that this might have had was overwhelmed by several scenes in the book describing (in more detail than I cared to read) rape/sodomy, pornographic photos, and other sexual themes.
* Jane seems to decry profiteerigng capitalistic ventures, in particular, the meat industry. Jane decries what she calls "faux dumb," the fact that so many Americans choose to be ignorant about things like the meat industry. However, one could argue that Jane is "faux dumb" about other things that she mentions but refrains from analysis from; for example, she explores the option of abortion early in her pregnancy, but is silent about the industry that provides that "service" Abortion in this country is a money making enterprise like the meat industry, as very few doctors are giving them out of the kindness of their own hearts; it is also a bloody and messy business, but Jane remains "faux dumb" about this as well. And this is to be expected, since the narrative will tend to fit with the political views of the author; Ozeki apparently leans toward the liberal end of the spectrum, in which the abortion industry is something that one had dare not criticize.
I'm not suggesting the Ruth Ozeki should have written a book about the abortion industry, because the book would have received critical acclaim only from those who are pro-life. The book, as it stands, is anti-American meat industry, and as such, the "bad" characters who are on the side of the beef industry are likely to be believeable only to people who are already disposed to oppose that industry. I think that if Ozeki wanted to score points against the beef industry, the point would have been better made by making a real documentary, rather than by creating a work of fiction that uses overly villainized characters who serve to make an overly stated point, and that contains gratuitous use of sexual themes and profanity. The book has its wholesome moments (such as the Bukowsky and the Dawes families, and the scene near the end where Akiko is hospitably welcomed to America and treated to food aboard an Amtrak family by fellow riders), but I felt that the bad outweighed the good.
Summary of My Year of Meats
The perfect fiction companion to The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food
Now that Michael Pollan's New York Times bestsellers have opened up a national dialogue about where food really comes from, conscientious readers everywhere will want to devour My Year of Meats. When documentarian Jane Takagi-Little finally lands a job producing a Japanese television show that just happens to be sponsored by the American meat-exporting industry, she begins to uncover some unsavory truths about love, fertility, and a very dangerous hormone called DES. A modern-day take on Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, veteran filmmaker Ruth Ozeki's novel has been hailed as "rare and provocative" (USA Today) and "up-to-the-minute" (Chicago Tribune).
Now that Michael Pollan's New York Times bestsellers have opened up a national dialogue about where food really comes from, conscientious readers everywhere will want to devour My Year of Meats. When documentarian Jane Takagi-Little finally lands a job producing a Japanese television show that just happens to be sponsored by the American meat-exporting industry, she begins to uncover some unsavory truths about love, fertility, and a very dangerous hormone called DES. A modern-day take on Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, veteran filmmaker Ruth Ozeki's novel has been hailed as "rare and provocative" (USA Today) and "up-to-the-minute" (Chicago Tribune).
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.
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