My Year of Meats Chapter 1-4

Aaron Stokke
Sadashivan – Representation
My Year of Meats Ch. 1-4

Similar Voices

In the novel, My Year of Meats, by Ruth L. Ozeki, there are three main characters that all share some striking similarities. These three characters are Jane, a bicultural documentarian, Akiko, an abused housewife, and finally Sei Shonagon, the female documentarian from Japan’s Heian Court.
One of the things that these women have in common is their feelings of being thieves in one sense of another. On page 33, Jane is thinking of Shonagon slipping in and out of people’s lives, taking what information she wants to create her documentaries. After creating this picture of Shonagon slinking in the shadows, Jane makes the comment that relates herself to this. She states that “one requisite of a good documentarian: you must shamelessly take what is available,” implying that all documentarians are thieves in nature, picking and choosing what they want out of other’s lives to portray in their documentaries. As far as Akiko is concerned, on page 37 the author states “sometimes Akiko felt like a thief, sneaking through the desolate corners of her own life, stealing back moments and pieces of herself.” Akiko’s character in the novel is that of an abused woman, for whom nothing seems to work out. This characteristic is shared among the other characters as well.
Although we do not know much about Shonagon’s personal life, we do know that Jane, Akiko, and another character, Suzie, all share a problem with having things work out in their favor. On page 24 and 25, Mr. Oda, the director of the Japanese documentary in the film, gets mad at Jane over her inability to keep Suzie from doing things to destroy his ideas for the documentary. She ships her mother’s handmade quilt to her sister’s and buys a new one because she is embarrassed about its appearance on international television. It turns out that the quilt interested Mr. Oda; he felt that it gave her home a rustic and authentic feel. Suzie, for all of the effort that she puts into accommodating a Japanese documentary film crew, and hosting a televised family dinner, is thanked only by learning of her husband’s adultery. Akiko, on a similar note, was unable to bear children, so her husband made her gain weight to change the situation. In order to gain weight, something honestly out of her control, Akiko was made to watch the documentary, My American Wife, created by Jane and Mr. Oda every week. Akiko was expected to learn a new American meat dish to prepare for her husband and hopefully put some weight on her bones; she was even expected to fill out a questionnaire about the documentary that her husband had specially prepared for her. In the novel, Akiko feels as if she cannot do anything right, from preparing dinner for her husband to doing something as simple as waiting in line for the swings, which had terrible consequences as seen on page 23 and 24.
There are many similarities between the characters in this novel. I am sure that as the novel progresses, completely new and unexpected connections between the characters will be formed.