Idaho Commission for Libraries

My Year of Meats is a novel which blends boisterous comedy, human drama, sometimes violent action, and unflinching reportage as it reveals the unethical practices of the American meat industry.  Its narrator, Jane Tagaki-Little, is a Japanese-American filmmaker hired by a Japanese concern to produce a series of television programs promoting American meat (especially beef) entitled “My American Wife.”  Sponsored by a beef-importing concern, the show is designed to highlight a different wholesome American family each week, and Jane crosses the country in search of subjects.  Along the way, however, she begins to learn frightening things about the use of hormones in meat, along with practices in feedlots and slaughterhouses, and she finds herself increasingly drawn to families whose lives deviate from the stereotypically “American” paradigm that her sponsors demand (a black extended family, a lesbian vegetarian couple).  As Jane begins to sabotage the series (and find her own vocation as an independent filmmaker), she enters a correspondence with the abused, childless wife of her brutal Japanese sponsor, and the novel takes up issues of sexual exploitation as well as questions of food safety and ethical practice.

*Cover reprinted with permission from Penguin Group (U.S.A.) Inc.

Author Information

Ruth Ozeki is a filmmaker and novelist who was raised in New Haven, Connecticut, daughter of a Japanese mother and American father.  She studied English and Asian Studies as Smith College, then received a Japanese Ministry of Education Fellowship to do graduate work on classical Japanese literature in Japan.  While in that country, she also taught English, founded a language school, worked as a bar hostess, and studied flower arranging and Noh drama.  In 1985, she returned to New York and worked on low-budget horror films.  She graduated to television production, where she spent several years directing documentaries for a Japanese company, and then began directing her own films. Her work has won numerous prizes and has been aired on PBS and at prestigious festivals, including the Sundance Film Festival.

My Year of Meats was her first novel; it was translated into eleven languages and won many awards, including the American Book Award.  Her second novel, All Over Creation, is set on a family farm in Idaho and also won an American Book Award.  Married to an artist, Ozeki lives in New York and in British Columbia.

Author website
Interview by Powell's.com
Penguin Reading Guides

Photo by Carol N. Vu

Discussion Questions

1. Quite a few recent books (including The Omnivore’s Dilemma, on the list of additional readings for this series) have exposed dangerous practices in the American meat industry.  Is there an advantage to informing the reading public about these concerns through a work of fiction like this, rather than simply in a nonfiction form? 

2. How do you respond to the troubling facts about American meat presented in this novel?  What do these practices suggest about contemporary American culture and attitudes?  What might be done to change them, and what might be the consequences of such changes?

3. What picture of America do the producers of “My American Wife” want to convey to Japanese viewers through its portrayal of American eating habits?  Did this picture ever correspond to real American life, or has it always been a fiction?  Why might such an image appeal to an international (or specifically Japanese) audience, even if it is a fiction, in what it suggests about America?

4. Knowing that Ozeki is a filmmaker, can you see evidence of documentary filmmaking techniques in this book?  Do they enhance its message?

5. One criticism that might be leveled at this book is that almost all of its women are “good” characters.  If not heroic (and many are), they are victims with good intentions who eventually find their own voices.  Many male characters, on the other hand, are  unethical, oblivious, or even brutal.  Do you think that Ozeki is stereotyping?

6. One of the assumptions of “My American Wife” is that eating solid traditional meat-based meals makes a family ideal.  What do you believe about the connection between eating patterns and family life?  Do families somehow mirror the way they eat in their happiness or unhappiness, stability or instability?  If so, what constitute desirable food practices, or undesirable, in your view?

7. What parallels exist between Jane and Akiko?  What does Ozeki seem to be saying through these two women about women in general, and their relationship to food?