 First edition cover | |
| Author | Ruth Ozeki |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Novel |
| Publisher | Viking Press |
Publication date | June 1, 1998 (first edition) |
| Publication place | United States |
| Pages | 432 (first edition) |
| ISBN | 978-0-670-87904-5 (first edition) |
| OCLC | 38168295 |
| 813/.54 21 | |
| LC Class | PS3565.Z45 M99 1998 |
My Year of Meats is the 1998 debut novel by Ruth Ozeki. The book takes advantage of the differences between Japanese and American culture to comment on both. [1]
Jane Takagi-Little is a Japanese-American documentary filmmaker who is hired to work for a Japanese production company, where she uncovers some unsavory truths about love, fertility, and a dangerous hormone called DES. The company works with BEEF-EX to promote the use of American beef in Japan by creating a Japanese television show called My American Wife!. [2]
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.
The book switches point of view from Jane Takagi-Little and Akiko Ueno.
Jane Urquhart, LL.D is a Canadian novelist and poet. She is the internationally acclaimed author of seven award-winning novels, three books of poetry and numerous short stories. As a novelist, Urquhart is well known for her evocative style which blends history with the present day. Her first novel, The Whirlpool, gained her international recognition when she became the first Canadian to win France's prestigious Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger. Her subsequent novels were even more successful. Away, published in 1993, won the Trillium Award and was a national bestseller. In 1997, her fourth novel, The Underpainter, won the Governor General's Literary Award.
A fajita, in Tex-Mex cuisine, is any stripped grilled meat, optionally served with stripped peppers and onions usually served on a flour or corn tortilla. The term originally referred to skirt steak, the cut of beef first used in the dish. Popular alternatives to skirt steak include chicken and other cuts of beef, as well as vegetables instead of meat. In restaurants, the meat is usually cooked with onions and bell peppers. Popular condiments include shredded lettuce, sour cream, guacamole, salsa, pico de gallo, shredded cheese, refried beans, and diced tomatoes. "Tacos de arrachera" is applied to the northern Mexican variant of the dish.
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The Kiriyama Prize was an international literary award awarded to books about the Pacific Rim and South Asia. Its goal was to encourage greater understanding among the peoples and nations of the region. Established in 1996, the prize was last awarded in 2008.
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Michael Crummey is a Canadian poet and a writer of historical fiction. His writing often draws on the history and landscape of Newfoundland and Labrador.
Madeleine Thien is a Canadian short story writer and novelist. The Oxford Handbook of Canadian Literature has considered her work as reflecting the increasingly trans-cultural nature of Canadian literature, exploring art, expression and politics inside Cambodia and China, as well as within diasporic East Asian communities. Thien's critically acclaimed novel, Do Not Say We Have Nothing, won the 2016 Governor General's Award for English-language fiction, the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards for Fiction. It was shortlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize, the 2017 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, and the 2017 Rathbones Folio Prize. Her books have been translated into more than 25 languages.
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Ruth Ozeki is an American-Canadian author, filmmaker and Zen Buddhist priest. Her books and films, including the novels My Year of Meats (1998), All Over Creation (2003), A Tale for the Time Being (2013), and The Book of Form and Emptiness (2021), seek to integrate personal narrative and social issues, and deal with themes relating to science, technology, environmental politics, race, religion, war and global popular culture. Her novels have been translated into more than thirty languages. She teaches creative writing at Smith College, where she is the Grace Jarcho Ross 1933 Professor of Humanities in the Department of English Language and Literature.
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Rachel Isadora is an American illustrator, children's book author, specializing in picture books, and painter. She is most famous for the book Ben's Trumpet, runner-up for the 1980 Caldecott Medal, or Caldecott Honor Book, and winner of the Boston Globe-Horn Book honor. Ben's Trumpet was adapted to video and also translated into a ballet by the Boston ballet company BalletRox in 2009. The more than 150 children's books Isadora has written and illustrated span a wide variety of topics, including ballet and dance, American urban culture and family life, life in Africa, and traditional fairy tales. Several of Isadora’s books have been selected by Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. Isadora was a professional ballet dancer before an injury led to a change of careers. In addition to freelance writing and illustration, Isadora shows and sells oil paintings, many of which reflect her love of dance, as well as her experiences living in Africa and New York City.
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