My Year of Meats, Ruth L. Ozeki (3)
This book makes an interesting fictional companion piece
to ‘Omnivore’s Dilemma’ and ‘Eating Animals’. The main character, Jane, is a
half Japanese, half Caucasian woman who grew up in Minnesota. We meet her as
she embarks on a year of producing a Japanese TV show depicting wholesome
American’s cooking meat for their families. A beef company who hopes to inspire
the Japanese housewives to run out and buy meat to reproduce the exciting
recipes they see on the shows sponsors the show. We also follow Akiko, the
unhappy wife of one of Jane’s bosses, as she attempts to appease her husband
with duplicated recipes from the show. As Jane navigates her way through
producing and directing what she feels would be entertaining and educational
for the Japanese housewives, she often butts heads with her boss. As she gets
deeper, she starts to see the dark side of meat production, which is obviously
at odds with her sponsor’s views. Ms. Ozeki uses humor to highlight many of the
more disturbing elements of this book to make the passages a bit more palatable
(i.e. the bad guy wants to be called ‘John’ since his last name is Ueno, it is
pronounced ‘John Way-no’). I liked the book – though I am not sure it would be
to everyone’s taste, pun intended.
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