“Everyone knew that the side dishes were typecast. The carrot was a tall redhead named Rusty. The Green Beans were a pair of skinny twins. The cherry Tomato went to a rosy second grader with shiny cheeks. The corn was a tawny kid named Kellogg. Face it. What is a potato? A potato is a fat, round, dumpy white thing, wrapped in burlap, rolling around on a dirty stage. Some kids never had to be vegetables at all. Some kids got to be human beings-Pilgrims or Indians- and eat the rest of the kids for dinner.”

What happens when you cross potatoes and satellites?

Note: This is just a draft. It is a mess and includes many notes to myself. It is also inccomplete and needs to be refined.

“’This,’ he said beaming, ‘is the Spudnik!’” [pg. 49]

• Satellite for potatos
• Sputnik = Russian satellite, first ever satellite, major key in cold war, helped start space race

“It had the unmistakable shape of a Winebago, boxy and inelegant, but the body of the vehicle was covered with pop-riveted patches of tin and aluminum, like scales, while its roof had been shingled with some sort of dark, rectangular paneling.” [pg. 47-48]

Nature, economy and identity

October 30^th, 2015

The story begins with the description of the earth.

“It starts with the earth. How can it not? Imagine the planet like a spirit peach, whose pit forms the core, whose flesh its mantle, and whose fuzzy skin its crust- no, that doesn’t do justice to the crust, which is, after all, where all of like takes place. The earth’s crust must be more like the rind of the orange, thicker and more durable, quite unlike the thin skin of a bruisable peach. Or is it? Funny, how you never think to wonder.”(p.3)

There is a complex, yet undeniable relationship between environment and identity. Every aspect of one’s identity has been molded by the environments they have resided in. In All Over Creation, Ruth Ozeki deliberately lays out an elaborate web of almost inconceivable connections between her characters and environments to convey the importance of the relationship between environment and identity.

In All Over Creation by Ruth Ozeki, the fight against genetically engineered food becomes intertwined with a multigenerational family’s struggle to repair the cracks in their relationships. Ozeki rotates through a small group of the characters, revealing their unshared thoughts about family, relationships, and the environment. While the relationship between Yumi and her father Lloyd becomes a central thread throughout, Yumi’s mother, Momoko, rarely enters the heated confrontations. Why does Ozeki overlook Momoko when she could have been a point of view narrator for some of the chapters? What role does Momoko occupy in her relationship with her family and with the environment?

Environment and Identity in “All Over Creation”