4.5/5 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.If you spend too much time amongst the bestsellers and the prize winners and the white male authors of the world, you will be misled in your assumptions of what is possible for literature at a particular point in time. Romanticism, Realism, Modernism, Post-Modernism, de blah, de blah, de blah, all these flitty little titles that do not help a bit when I want to explore Arabic, Chinese, or Brazilian lit of a mislabeled time. Ignoring the cross reference of countries outside the Anglo stasis doesn't help, for what is this particular title my world carries on? Post-post-modernism, when Adichie thrives on Realism? Post-post-post-modernism, when a millenium-old text is interwoven with what is written on the cusp of 2000 CE? And then, of course, no political for you. Even further on, no Internet save for in diminished, slighted, sniggering tones; whistling in the dark of knowledge is power.I continue to eat the four-legged sort of meat despite having had a pescaterian sister for a number of years, so what she has not accomplished was not to be done so by this work. True, there's many a guilt trip in the dietary movement, but the pretenses of ethical capitalism (there is no ethical consumption in late capitalism) and appropriation of various civil rights movements and genocides (could you not disrespect the death of millions whose descendants are still oppressed today in order to further promote your vegan restaurant of the day? kthx) has left me without the urge to expand my discipline in that particular direction. I deal more in suicide and military industrial complexes than domestic abuse and the atrocities of the meat market, which is a reason why A Tale for the Time Being hit me with a much fiercer pulse that powers my heartbeat to this day. However, the half star lowered rating above should be contextualized as Ozeki compared Ozeki, rather than Ozeki compared to everyone else. It would be unfair to said everyone else, when so few consider pushing their writing in all directions of contemporary times a necessity. ...it occurred to me that I was probably the only person in the history of the world who has ever recalled Shōnagon in a strip joint in Texas. I liked that.People Who Look Pleased with ThemselvesI was at the top of that list.It's very hard to make me cry. If you insult me, I'll respond with far worse. If you hit me, I'll rip your throat out. As someone who isn't male and thus doesn't have the stoicism complex to lose, let me tell you: it's not healthy. Thus, I pay careful attention to what makes me uncontrollably bawl, and what I've found thus far consists of an acknowledgement of a Big Scary World, coupled with an acknowledgement of the necessity to do something about that Big Scary part of the World, mixed in with a giggling through tears that marvels at those who do not sidestep representation of the real in favor of the safe security of the white suburban narrative. Everyone has a story, but do not cozen me to the narratives of the villains on the backs of the usually silent, nor pretend there is only one, single, irrefutable way of righteousness. More often than not, there is money, power, and their resulting illusions, all too often offered sacrifices of communication and humanity, all too often used as the end all excuse, the ultimate safety blanket. There are many answers, none of them right, but some of them most definitely wrong.I like works that do this. They are few and far between, but ignoring the sign posts of literary convention helps a bunch. Think Mary Ann Evans, George Eliot for the more widely known pen name. Then find her everywhere and everywhen and every tongue the world can sing.
this would be ruth ozeki's fantastic first novel. you should go read this right now, if you haven't already. it's one of my all-time favorites. the story is based around two protaganists: one is a mixed race american woman who works as a television producer. the japanese beef council hires her to produce a series that profiles a different american family & its beef consumption every week, highlighting the all-american robust outdoors-y health of the family, & featuring a beef-heavy recipe at the end. the other protaganist is a japanese housewife who watches the show. her husband wants them to have a baby, but he doesn't know that she has been throwing up everything she eats in an effort to prevent herself from menstruating so that she won't get pregnant. she prepares the beef meals from the program for him every night, but doesn't eat them herself, & she feels confined within her housewife role & wants to leave the marriage, but doesn't know how. meanwhile, the american TV producer starts to comprehend the horrors of the beef industry & the unfortunate side effects that accompany excessive meat-eating, & starts to feel pathologically guilty about her role in producing this beef propaganda for japanese viewers. one family she profiles raises cattle for beef, & the young daughter there has already started developing breasts because of over-exposure to growth hormones. the father in another family has developed thyroid cancer because of ingesting the hormones in the low-grade chicken products his family eats. i think the TV producer also has some kind of pregnancy side plot, but i can't remember exactly what it is. the book could be just way too stident propaganda, but it's actually presented as a really compelling story full of moral ambiguities. & maybe it will make you stop eating meat. not that i have, but you know.
What do You think about My Year Of Meats (1999)?
Y media. Ah pues ya acabé mi libro de señora. La verdad este libro lo empecé solamente porque no tenía otro audiolibro en mi teléfono. Al principio me pareció que iba a ser un first world problems durante todo el libro. Creo que tiene que ver con el ambiente que se mueven las protagonistas. Tardo un poco en agarrar el ritmo pero una vez que lo hizo, el libro se puso muy interesante. Es la historia principalmente de dos mujeres "japonesas" una super trve japonesa que cae en la presión social de casarse y hacer una familia. Y pues realmente no era lo que ella quería. Y la otra japonesa-americana es una documentalista que le dan un trabajo de "reality" show para hacer "My american wife" y que sea transmitido en el japón. Es un libro lleno de mujeres frustradas, pero no cae en cliches eso me gusto. No es que las mujeres estén locas just for the fun of it. Creo que cada una tiene problemas muy a su manera, y la manera de llevarlos puede que no sea la mejor opción pero es lo que pueden hacer. Me sorprendió que me gustara mucho, creo que ya entré a la menopausia o algo. Y ahora un gif de señora:
—Pustulio
My Year of Meats by Ruth Ozeki was my first reading selection for 2014. Ever since I read A Tale for the Time Being, I have been totally enamored with Ozeki and her very charming writing style. My Year of Meats only reaffirmed my feelings. It was published in 1998 and clearly marks the time in Ozeki’s life when she transitioned from her career in documentary film-making to (thankfully) one in writing fiction. Her previous work in film and her dedication to research is evident in both books and, I think, the root cause of the richly-detailed-and-multi-layered-narrative-paired-with-excerpts-from-other-works-paired-with-factual-data style she’s developed. I think it also explains why she’s never satisfied with telling a story from only one perspective, choosing instead to use multiple narrators in order to enhance and show all angles of the central story.
—Julie
Many years ago, my parents had a property (Australian for "farm") in the Wyong Valley north of Sydney, where they bred and raised beef cattle on pasture. It was a beautiful place, worlds away from the stinking feedlots so vividly depicted in Ruth Ozeki's novel. Even though, of course, the end place--someone's table--is the same. My mother read My Year Of Meat while she lived and worked on this property, and then she passed it on to me, saying that she found it "interesting." Soon after that, my parents sold up and retired.Didactic and full of unlikely coincidences though My Year Of Meat is, you've got to admire Ozeki for deciding to treat the beef industry in novel form. On pp. 393-94, her documentary-making heroine Jane even muses on the difficulty of telling such a story: "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."The chapter epigraphs from Sei Shōnagon's The Pillow Book are wonderfully chosen. Only the evil Japanese salaryman, Joichi Ueno (to be pronounced "John Wayne"), and his long-suffering wife Akiko struck me as unbelievable. Has the beef industry been cleaned up since the publication of Ozeki's novel? I doubt it. So My Year Of Meat is still well worth reading.
—G.G.
