Reading Response

Reading Response for Ozeki’s My Year of Meats (pp. 243-361)

Length: About 300-350 words (one long paragraph in double-space)

Due: Tuesday, Nov. 10

Please answer the following questions (about 300 words, but no more than 350 words) and provide your detailed analysis with well-supported textual examples (at least two direct quotes with page numbers). Please feel free to use any quotes from page 1 to 361 (the entire novel).

Writing Instruction:

Please italicize the novel title, My Year of Meat.
Please do not summarize the plot in this reading response. Writing about characters in general without answering the questions in the prompt will get a zero point.
Please do not use “I,” “you,” or “we” in your analysis paper.
Choose effective quotes to support your analysis (In other words, do not cite a quote about the plot). Please do not cite more than 3 lines for each quote and use an MLA in-text citation, referring to the character and put the page number after each quote in parentheses– (e.g.) Akiko felt, “To retreat, to purge–not a soul sees, yet these produce inner pleasure” (62).
Please make sure to add your detailed analysis after each quote.
*Penalty for late submissions: one day late (10 points off); two days late (20 points off)

*Please read the following questions carefully and provide effective textual examples to support your interpretation and analysis.

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*Note: Please read the assigned reading for this week (pp. 243-361) first before you work on the reading response, so that you can include effective textual examples to prove your point. *You are allowed to use this source and your response in the final paper.

*Please read the following questions carefully. You do not need to answer the questions in the order of being raised. Please feel free to rearrange the questions as you like and provide your thoughts and analysis on the novel, using convincing evidence to support your analysis

Reading Response for Ozeki’s My Year of Meats (pp. 243-361, 50 points)

Black, Shameem. “Fertile Cosmofeminism: Ruth Ozeki and Transnational Reproduction.” Medians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism, vol. 5, no. 1, 2004, pp. 226-56.

Shameem Black in her article states, “One of its clearest devices is the use of the literary double, which divides the novel between the minds of Jane and Akiko. Precisely because this traditional narrative device invites us to read Jane and Akiko as alter egos, the parallels between their struggles with fertility seem clearly designed to offer two versions of a similar problem” (237).

What do you make of Black’s view of Jane and Akiko as “alter egos”? Or would you rather describe their similarities (and/or differences) in different words? Akiko’s and Jane’s stories are interwoven with each other in the novel. Do you find any commonalities between Akiko and Jane? Akiko was inspired by the programs Jane directed. Does Akiko also influence Jane? What do you think Ozeki is trying to convey through Jane and Akiko’s collaborative relationships? What (or who) do they fight and oppose in common? How does Joichi affect Akiko and Jane? What role does Joichi play in these women’s lives?