MY YEAR OF MEATS

by Unknown

• ISBN13: 9780670879045
• ISBN10: 0670879045
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1998-01-01
• Publisher: PENGUIN

Summary

Jane Takagi-Little, by trade a documentary filmmaker, by nature a truth seeker, is "racially half", Japanese and American, and, as she tells us, "neither here nor there..". Jane is sharp-edged, desperate for a job, and determined not to fall in love again. Akiko Ueno, a young Japanese housewife, lives with her husband in a bleak high-rise apartment complex in a suburb of Tokyo. Akiko is so thin her bones hurt, and her husband, an ad agency salaryman who wants her to get pregnant, is insisting that she put some meat on them - literally. Ruth L. Ozeki's novel opens with two women on opposite sides of the globe, whose lives cannot be further apart. But when Jane gets a job, coordinating a television series whose mission is to bring the American heartland, and American meat, into the homes of Japan, she makes some wrenching discoveries - about love, meat, honor, and a hormone called DES. When Jane and Akiko's lives converge, what is revealed taps the deepest concerns of our time - how the past informs the present and how we live and love in this "blessed, ever-shrinking world".

Author Biography

Ruth Ozeki's mesmerizing debut novel has captivated readers and reviewers worldwide. When documentarian Jane Takagi-Little finally lands a job producing My American Wife!, a Japanese television show sponsored by an American meat-exporting business, she discovers some unsavory truths about love, fertility, and a hormone called DES. Meanwhile, on the other side of the globe, Akiko Ueno, a beleaguered Japanese housewife, struggles to escape from her child-craving husband. When Jane's and Akiko's lives intersect, the deepest concerns of our time are illuminated: how the past informs the present, and how we live and love in an ever-shrinking world.

Table of Contents

Prologue	1	(4)
1. The Sprouting Month	5	(12)
2. The Clothes-Lining Month	17	(14)
3. The Ever-Growing Month	31	(18)
4. The Deutzia Month	49	(36)
5. The Rice-Sprouting Month	85	(36)
6. The Water Month	121	(24)
7. The Poem-Composing Month	145	(24)
8. The Leaf Month	169	(30)
9. The Long Month	199	(44)
10. The Gods-Absent Month	243	(42)
11. The Frost Month	285	(38)
12. The End of the Year	323	(30)
Epilogue: January	353	(10)
Bibliography	363	(2)
Notes	365	(2)
Acknowledgments	367