Women In Ruth Ozeki's My Year Of Meats

Throughout history, having a vagina has led to certain expectation being thrust upon you. Ruth Ozeki outlines many of these expectations in her debut novel My Year of Meats. In the novel, readers witness various women struggle with how society views them as females. Women living in both Japanese and American cultures are included in My Year of Meats, but the women portrayed in American culture are particularly fascinating. Jane and the women she chooses to include in her episodes of My American Wife! do not fit into the ideal American society that BEEF-EX wants to portray, so they oppress Jane’s creative freedom in order to depict their image of the “perfect” American woman. BEEF-EX’s desire to depict the quintessential American woman, nevertheless,

BEEF-EX requires all the American wives broadcasted on their show to have children, which is one of the few rules Jane conforms too. However, Jane does, unsurprisingly, find ways to bend the rules. She films Grace Beaudroux and her family, who is a loving wife with twelve children. Grace may seem like a perfect candidate for My American Wife!, but there’s one problem: ten of her children are adopted from Korea. John Ueno in particular seems to dislike this episode of the show, and even decides to fly to America to help Jane choose American wives he deems acceptable. At another point, John Ueno’s wife, Akiko, proposes they could adopt like the Beaudroux family, which sends John into a rage. He violently shakes his wife and screams, “I want my own children. Mine. Do you hear? Mine! Not some bastard of a Korean whore and an idiot American soldier.” (Ozeki p. 100). It seems that John sees his wife, as well as other wives, useless if they are unable to bear children with their husbands’ genes. Women’s fertility is a salient theme in this novel and many women, including Jane and Akiko, feel they are less than other women due to their difficulties in conceiving a