by Ruth Ozeki
First published 1999
Jane Takagi-Little gets hired to produce a Japanese television program promoting American meat exports. The documentarian thinks she's landed a straightforward gig, but her work soon reveals disturbing connections between the meat industry and a hormone called DES. As Jane investigates deeper, she discovers how this chemical affects love, relationships, and human fertility. Her professional assignment becomes a personal journey that exposes the hidden costs of industrial food production. The story weaves together Jane's discoveries about corporate deception with her own struggles around intimacy and reproduction. Ruth Ozeki creates a narrative where one woman's job becomes a window into the dangerous intersection of profit, health, and human connection.
Genres: american-fiction, contemporary, 21st-century, activism
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: personal-journey, window-into-larger-issues
Setting: Japan
Period: 20th-century
400 pages · ebook · Penguin Group
Content warnings: medical-trauma