Abstract

While critics have explored Ozeki’s novel, My Year of Meats, in light of ethnicity, gender, environmental issues, and the politics of the food industry, this article focuses on an aspect that connects all of these elements—namely, the authorial collaborations at the center of the text. The two author-protagonists, the narrator, Jane Takagi-Little, and her Japanese counterpart, Akiko Ueno, define themselves in relation to a third author, Sei Shōnagon, and her tenth-century miscellany text known as The Pillow Book. In response to Roland Barthes’s arguments about the “modern scriptor,” I argue that Jane’s understanding of authorship shifts in relation to her increasingly intricate interactions with Ueno and Shōnagon, eventually leading to the realization that authorial power can manifest itself in positive and productive ways. Through these collaborations, Jane begins to comprehend her own hybridity and difference, her role as editor, and a new way to view creative and artistic freedom.

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