Story about two women: the strong, independent documentarian Jane Takagi-Little (Takagi for short); and the timid, weak Japanese housewife Akiko Ueno. They are indirectly linked by Joicho "John" Ueno, who is Akiko's abusive husband and Takagi's evil boss. Early in the novel, Jane says, “ All over the world, native species are migrating, if not disappearing, and in the next millennium the idea of an indigenous person or plant or culture will just seem quaint.” Do you believe that this is true? If so, do you perceive it as a step toward a more peaceful, accepting world, or as a step away from a diverse, well-textured world? Is it possible to maintain cultural diversity without prejudice? To avoid government oversight regarding what hormones cattle can be treated with, an American beef manufacturer begins selling their product in Japan, where no such regulation is in place. As a culture strongly influenced by Buddhism, however, the Japanese diet contains comparatively little meat. To boost sales, the beef manufacturer develops a reality TV show called My American Wife. Each week, Japanese audiences are introduced to a new American family, with the wife demonstrating how to cook a meat-laden dish. Akiko is the wife of Jane's producer in Japan. The two have never met, but Akiko has been moved by Jane's documentary series, and, like Jane, she embarks on a journey of examining her life.

Gatens, M. (2013). Imaginary bodies: Ethics, power and corporeality. London and New York: Routledge. This is my second Ozeki read. Last year I fell in love with A Tale for the Time Being. I will now actively seek her out. I am officially a super-fan.

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The juxtaposition of first-person and third-person narrative voices is another transgression of sorts. As a former documentary filmmaker, this question of voice and point of view is interesting on several levels, not the least of which is the effect of extreme subjectivity on notions of absolute or objective truth. Of course, this is a topic that Jane discusses quite overtly in the novel, and that forms its thematic underpinnings. World Health Organization (WHO). https://www.who.int/foodsafety/areas_work/food-technology/faq-genetically-modified-food/en/. Accessed 10 Aug 2019

some people on here found the book preachy. i can't for the life of me see any preachiness in it, but at the same time i do see, somehow, how one might feel preached at by it. eh. if you feel preached at just drop this book and read something else. ruth ozeki won't mind. she didn't write the book for you. Akiko Ueno, the bulimic Japanese wife of the executive who hatched the My American Wife! concept, lives an ocean away. She is thin, so thin that her bones hurt, so thin that her periods have stopped. If only she would eat more meat, her husband thinks, surely she would become “ample, robust, yet never tough or hard to digest,” much like the Texas women that he is so fond of. And so Akiko Ueno tunes in to My American Wife! every week, trying desperately to cook and consume delicious dishes, like Coca Cola Roast and Beef Fudge, that she learns from watching the American wives. Weird, huh? How someone just drops into your life like that. I mean, there we were, minding our own business. . . . What did we do to deserve her?” Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). https://www3.epa.gov/npdes/pubs/cafo.pdf. Accessed 15 Sep 2019 The story follows their individual discoveries - Jane of the meat industry and Akiko of herself - until their two journeys have them meet...through meat. It is a beautiful, humanist tale of the many things that connect us as humans and a very fulfilling read.Coming at us like this — in waves, massed and unbreachable—knowledge becomes symbolic of our disempowerment—becomes bad knowledge—so we deny it, riding its crest until it subsides from consciousness. . . . In this root sense, ignorance is an act of will, a choice that one makes over and over again, especially when information overwhelms and knowledge has become synonymous with impotence. She was born in New Haven, Connecticut of American father and a Japanese mother. She studied English and Asian Studies at Smith College and traveled extensively in Asia. She received a Japanese Ministry of Education Fellowship to do graduate work in classical Japanese literature at Nara University. During her years in Japan, she worked in Kyoto’s entertainment or “water” district as a bar hostess, studied flower arrangement as well as Noh drama and mask carving, founded a language school, and taught in the English Department at Kyoto Sangyo University. Parallel to Jane's story is the life of Akiko Ueno, a former manga artist who specialized in horror scenes and is reluctantly married to Joichi "John" Ueno, who works for BEEF-EX. John cares only that Akiko has a baby and forces her to watch My American Wife and cook the recipes, believing that it will allow her to conceive. However, as Akiko's independence and sense of self grows from watching the show and cooking for John, her relationship with John becomes violent. A migrant family who Jane features on the show as an attempt to be more inclusive to other ethnicities within the US, the Martinez’s emigrated to Texas so that their son could be born an American citizen and have access to good education and opportunities they never had in their home country. Vern and Grace Beaudroux I would like to think of my “ignorance” less as a personal failing and more as a massive cultural trend, an example of doubling, of psychic numbing, that characterises the end of the millennium. If we can’t act on knowledge, then we can’t survive without ignorance. So we cultivate the ignorance, go to great lengths to celebrate it, even. The faux-dumb aesthetic that dominates TV and Hollywood must be about this. Fed on a media diet of really bad news, we live in a perpetual state of repressed panic. We are paralyzed by bad knowledge, from which the only escape is playing dumb. Ignorance becomes empowering because it enables people to live. Stupidity becomes proactive, a political statement. Our collective norm.”

The effects of DES and hormonal drugs go further than pregnant women. Despite being illegal in the use of meat production, they are still popular among factory farmers. Cheap meat is often riddled with these hormones, and those in poverty who can afford nothing else suffer the consequences, such as heightened levels of estrogen and expedited puberty. These effects can be seen in some minority families Takagi-Little features on My American Wife! Throughout the novel the theme of trust and betrayal of that trust are found in several characters and situations. Jane pitches a show featuring "typical all-American families" to the network and they come to expect white Anglo-Saxon protestant families gleefully devouring red meat. Instead they get shown "the real America" that is to say culturally and ethnically diverse, and not a nation of beef-eaters. The betrayal of trust is also prevalent in John and Akiko's marriage. John frequents strip clubs as he finds himself more sexually stimulated by buxom American women. The biggest betrayal of trust however is that of Beef-Ex and the American public. The company is genuinely unconcerned by the harm that their tainted meat can cause. Moreover, despite knowing the harm it can cause they continue to promote their products and even push for increased consumption abroad. Update this section! Akiko is so underweight due to her bulimia, stemming from her dismal marriage to an asshole, that she cannot have children. However, her husband is obsessed with passing on his genes. He also enjoys drinking excessively, ogling strippers, and beating up his wife whom he only sees as an incubator for his future child.Khan, G. A. (2012). Vital materiality and non-human agency: An interview with Jane Bennett. In G. Browning, R. Prokhovnik, & M. Dimova-Cookson (Eds.), Dialogues with contemporary political theorists (pp. 42–57). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Hayles, K. (1999). How we became posthuman: Virtual bodies in cybernetics, literature, and informatics. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. These themes are played out of the relationships of both Jane and Akiko with their respective struggles with their miscarriages, surprising pregnancies and contrasting attitudes towards sex. John Ueno's frustration and anger towards his wife stems from her inability to bear him children which ultimately stems from his fears of how he will be perceived as a man. He feels greatly pressured to prove his virility as it is considered odd if Akiko did not become pregnant shortly after getting married. Akiko responds to his abuse in a meek, submissive manner as this is what she is expected to do. Jane also experiences marital grief associated with her difficulty in conceiving in her first marriage, eventually resulting in her divorce. In contrast to the subservient Akiko, Jane engages in passionate, casual sex with Sloan. There is also a strong contrast between the two characters when they are finally and unexpectedly able to conceive. The Sloane and Jane's baby actually becomes a catalyst in forging a mature and mutually caring relationship between them, whereas John and Akiko's child comes as a result of a a violent beating and an equally violent rape. The presence of their baby becomes part of the impetus that finally pushes Akiko to leave her abusive husband. Trust and Betrayal

No. As I mentioned, I’ve made two films, both of which have trodden into fictional realms before, and all through school and college I wrote short stories. In fact, as a child, the first thing I remember ever wanting to be was a novelist. The filmmaking was a bit of a detour.

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All of these characters are embedded in the terrain of America—and the text of the novel—like unique jewels. Each is different, yet none is less captivating than another. And as Jane, much to the chagrin of the Japanese production company, detonates stereotypes by incorporating these quirky, unforgettable characters into My American Wife!, a central theme of the novel begins to crystallize—that of authenticity. Are “authentic” American wives really the “ample, robust, yet never tough or hard to digest” middle-class white Americans that Beef-Ex wants to offer up to the Japanese TV audience? Ruth Ozeki paints a world where wives are “meat made manifest,” where, according to the Beef-Ex hierarchy of meats, “pork is possible but beef is best,” and with this type of metaphorical play, she deftly yet relentlessly teases out our own preconceptions and misconceptions about culture, gender, and race.