{"id":33107,"date":"2013-08-24T17:49:47","date_gmt":"2013-08-24T17:49:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=33107"},"modified":"2014-10-26T12:18:32","modified_gmt":"2014-10-26T12:18:32","slug":"%e2%80%9ca-universe-of-many-worlds%e2%80%9d-an-interview-with-ruth-ozeki","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=33107","title":{"rendered":"\u201cA Universe of Many Worlds\u201d: An Interview with Ruth Ozeki"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cA Universe of Many Worlds\u201d: An Interview with Ruth Ozeki<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States<\/a>
\nVolume 38, Issue 3<\/a> (September 2013)
\npages 160-171
\nDOI: 10.1093\/melus\/mlt028<\/a><\/p>\n

Eleanor Ty<\/a><\/strong>, Professor of English and Film Studies
\nWilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada<\/em><\/p>\n

That\u2019s what it felt like when I was growing up, like I was a random fruit in a field of genetically identical potatoes.\u2014Ruth Ozeki, All Over Creation<\/em> (4)<\/p>\n

Is death even possible in a universe of many worlds? \u2014Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being<\/em> (400)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Immigrant and ethnic writing frequently addresses the dilemma of being caught between two worlds. More often than not, the protagonists in these works are torn between the desire to assimilate into American culture while negotiating with the original culture of their parents and the realization that their ethnic, racial, or religious difference is what makes them special as hyphenated subjects. For Ruth Ozeki<\/a>, filmmaker and internationally acclaimed author of My Year of Meats<\/em> (1998), being in between two cultures becomes a source of inspiration and strength. As the daughter of a Japanese mother and an American father, she feels that being outside of the mainstream can be an advantage. In an interview with Barbara Palmer, Ozeki said, outside \u201cis the only place for a writer to be. Otherwise, you lose your perspective, your edge. You stop seeing things.\u201d<\/p>\n

In both My Year of Meats<\/em> and her second novel, All Over Creation<\/em> (2003), the protagonists are mixed-race Japanese Americans who do not quite fit the image of the \u201cattractive, appetizing, and all-American\u201d ideal woman represented in popular media (My 8). Jane Takagi-Little of My Year of Meats<\/em> tries to explode this nostalgic \u201cillusion of America\u201d (9) by deliberately focusing on nonwhite, non-heterosexual, and nontraditional families when she gets a chance to direct a television show called My American Wife! <\/em>for a Japanese audience. In All Over Creation<\/em>, Yummy Fuller, who always had to play \u201cIndian princess\u201d in Liberty Falls Elementary School when she was growing up (7), runs away from her farming family…<\/p>\n

Read or purchase the article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cA Universe of Many Worlds\u201d: An Interview with Ruth Ozeki MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States Volume 38, Issue 3 (September 2013) pages 160-171 DOI: 10.1093\/melus\/mlt028 Eleanor Ty, Professor of English and Film Studies Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada That\u2019s what it felt like when I was growing up, like I was a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,16,13743,1196,8,20,25],"tags":[14463,4259,14211,470],"class_list":["post-33107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-asia","category-interviews","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-usa","category-women","tag-eleanor-ty","tag-melus","tag-melus-multi-ethnic-literature-of-the-united-states","tag-ruth-ozeki"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33107\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}