My Year of Meats
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- 59,00 kr
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- 59,00 kr
Publisher Description
In a single eye-opening year two women, worlds apart, experience parallel awakenings. In New York, Jane Takagi-Little lands a job producing a Japanese television show sponsored by an American meat-exporting business, exposing some unsavoury truths – about the meat industry and herself. In Tokyo, housewife Akiko Ueno diligently prepares the recipes from Jane's programme. Struggling to please her husband, she increasingly doubts her commitment to the life she has fallen into.
As Jane and Akiko both battle to assert their individuality on opposite sides of the globe, they are drawn together in a startling story of strength, courage and love.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Japanese-American documentary filmmaker Jane Takagi Little seems to have found the perfect job producing My American Wife, a program sponsored by American beef exporters that introduces Japanese housewives to "typical, wholesome" American wives, their families and their beef recipes. Jane and her crew travel around the U.S., filming wives and their families as they make beef dinners. Meanwhile, in Tokyo, shy Akiko has been driven to bulimia by her domineering and abusive husband, John, who works with the beef exporters on the show. John insists that Akiko watch the show, cook, gain weight and get pregnant. Over the course of the "year of meats," Jane begins to feel guilty about exploiting the wives, confused about her romantic life and disturbed by the sordid secrets she uncovers about meat production. Inspired by Jane's increasingly subversive episodes (particularly the segment on lesbian vegetarians), Akiko gradually realizes what she wants out of life and finds the courage to reach for it. Narrator Fields gives a sterling performance, vividly bringing to life the many disparate voices from Jane's sharp-tongued mother to the various housewives on the show. Ozeki's prior experience producing similar shows for beef lobbyists and obvious compassion for Jane, combined with Fields's empathetic performance, make this a worthwhile listen. Based on the Viking hardcover.
