Private Eye of Food Politics

Celebrated author Ruth Ozeki writes to satisfy her curiosity.

by NADINE PEDERSEN

Novelist Ruth Ozeki is midway through a public reading at Joy Kogawa House when my cellphone goes off, blaring the overture to La Traviata at full volume. Mortified, I frantically root through my bag as Ozeki continues, unruffled, to read from her latest work, a chapter in the collaboratively written novel Click. As members of the audience begin shifting in their seats, Ozeki stops and waits until—finally—I yank the offending device out of my bag just as the ring crescendos and the call falls into voice mail.

“I’m so sorry,” I offer sheepishly in the sudden silence.

Across the packed room, a woman crisply replies, “You should be.”

Ozeki adjusts her Buddy Holly-style glasses and resumes, while I slowly sink into my chair.

Later, I wait at the end of the autograph line to offer my apologies. Spotting me, Ozeki gives a sympathetic smile. “Don’t worry about the cellphone. You know, when you’re up there it’s really not as distracting as you’d think.”

Where most authors might be tempted to get in at least a little dig after such a rude interruption, Ozeki reflects the same warmth I had experienced a week earlier when we first met for an interview.

It strikes me that, as a practising Buddhist, Ozeki has not only mastered inner balance, but also how to keep her ego in place—a pleasant surprise when you consider the scope of her accomplishments.

An award-winning filmmaker, Ozeki roared onto the literary scene a decade ago with her first novel, My Year of Meats. Since then, Meats has been marinated in accolades, most recently as the 2007 pick of the Vancouver Public Library’s “One Book, One Vancouver” program.

Meats is an important work—one that has made Ozeki sort of a cross between a modern-day Upton Sinclair and Marshall McLuhan, as she exposes the sinister sides of both agribusiness and the media while simultaneously exploring issues of race, class, and gender. When Ozeki decided to write Meats, she was primarily interested in exploring how media is used to manipulate consumers, but as she carved into the meat industry—uncovering information about antibiotics, growth hormones, and questionable farming practices—meat took on a disturbing edge.

As Ozeki wrote these unsettling facts into the novel, she began scrutinizing what crossed her dinner plate. Before long, her regular forays to Chinatown butcher shops for dinner came to a halt. Inadvertently, she had become “contaminated by food politics,” a topic she revisited—probably for the last time—in her second award-winning novel, All Over Creation, a story in which she examines genetically engineered potatoes and whether they will save the world from hunger or destroy the environment.

“I get e-mails and people telling me all the time about how the books have changed their diets,” she says. “I mean, a lot of people have stopped eating meat as a result of reading My Year of Meats.”

She gives a guilty laugh. Ozeki’s still a meat-eater—albeit of locally raised, organic meat. As someone who views following the ethical precepts of Zen Buddhism as an integral part of her spiritual practice, her omnivorous diet is something she both struggles with and accepts. So when people tell her about their dietary conversions, she feels conflicted. “I always go around and apologize to people. A little knowledge is a bad thing… But you know… I’m very suspicious of absolute rules about things. I’m not an absolutist. I’m much more of a relativist.... And things change. I’m a Buddhist—things change.”

In the past 10 years, Ozeki’s life has certainly changed. When she wrote Meats, she was living with her husband, visual artist Oliver Kellhammer, in the Downtown Eastside. Just down the alley, a thrift store regularly threw out mattresses and couches, which were then put to use by drug addicts and prostitutes. Meanwhile, trucks full of chickens rumbled by to the local slaughterhouse; the stench regularly wafted through the neighbourhood.

The couple now lives on Cortes Island, in a house with a reinforced foundation to support their pet turtles’ tanks. Although Ozeki is clearly enamoured with her husband, she confesses, “My domestic life is really quite boring.” Well, maybe more “cerebral” than “boring”: Kellhammer describes in his blog the pleasure he experienced upon discovering a Japanese mountain yam in their miniature greenhouse, and how he and Ozeki entertained themselves one Christmas by making a bestiary of paper insects.

Their home life serves as the stable foundation to an existence that is otherwise in motion. Ozeki travels to New York at least three times a year, regularly goes on lecture tours, and is invited to participate in various events involving film, books, food, or the environment. She loves the opportunity to dialogue with people about issues close to her heart, but admits that travel is also becoming a personal challenge.

“Environmentally, it’s a problem. I try to be rigorous about buying my carbon credits and stuff like that, but that’s not really a solution,” she says. “I’m going to have to figure out how to consolidate my activities in a radical kind of way.”

Would she consider a solution like Margaret Atwood’s LongPen™ technology, which enables authors to sign books and interact with their readers without having to actually go on tour?

“I really believe in face-to-face meetings,” she says. “If it was just about selling books, I mean, who cares? I wouldn’t do it at all. It’s not about that. It’s about… having quality interactions with new generations of students, for example.”

Does this mean she’s on a mission?

“I don’t have a mission at all. I’m a novelist. If I write about things it’s because they interest me. My mission is to satisfy my curiosity. And if anybody else is interested, that’s great.”

Writer and book editor Nadine Pedersen also believes in change, particularly when applied to ringtones.

For more on Ruth Ozeki, visit ruthozeki.com.

To learn about the “One Book, One Vancouver” reading program, see vpl.ca/MDC/onebookonevancouver.html. Ruth Ozeki’s latest work is a chapter in the collaborative young adult novel Click (published by Scholastic). All royalties go to Amnesty International.

Thinking of going organic? Many organic farmers sell their meat and produce at local farmers’ markets. For info, visit eatlocal.org.

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