Web Paper or Special Event

Previous draft: /oneworld/changing-our-story-2015/seeds-and-potatoes-metaphors-%E2%80%9Call-over-creation%E2%80%9D%E2%80%94first-draft

Sasha Moiseyev-Foster

Changing Our Stories

Professor J. Cohen

October 30, 2015

Seeds and Potatoes as Metaphors in “All Over Creation”

Seeds are the source of life over most of the planet. Without seeds, there would be no plants, no animals, nothing but the microscopic bacteria that first gave rise to multicellular organisms on Earth. Similarly, in her novel “All Over Creation,” Ruth Ozeki endows seeds with power over the plot, and thereby uses them as a multifaceted metaphor for the characters’ self-image and emotions, as well as the  overall story itself.

Link to first draft -- /oneworld/changing-our-story-2015/titillation-meaning-terminology-exotic-and-erotic

The Elision in Meaning

The separation and hybridization of meaning cannot be seen independently from the structures that enforce the model of power in which we live. No word is defined without another, no meaning is without relation to value, no value is without a source of power. This power tells women that the erotic involves no transcendence of sexual, and that they must fear and devalue its essence.

All Over Creation, by Ruth Ozeki, is not an environmental treatise or manifesto. It is a novel, a work of fiction, and it is about people and the complex relationships between them. In the midst of daddy issues, child molestation, pornography, cancer, baby-stealing, miscarriages, abortion, cultural appropriation, Alzheimer’s, and bombs, the environmental side of the book can seem secondary. And yet, as Yumi tells us at the beginning of the story, “It starts with the earth. How can it not?” (Ozeki 3).  The very point that the novel is making is that we cannot separate ourselves from the environment. Ozeki demonstrates this through Momoko’s relationship with seeds.

“Exotic” and “Native”

 My first draft started with several questions on Momoko and her “exotic” identity. I wondered what is the real meaning of  “exotic” and how does people use it to define others. With the more exploration of Momoko, I was convinced that people should not be defined as exotic or native by its origin. As this word embrace more complexity related to identity.

Elena Luedy

Professor Cohen

E-Sem

11/6/15

Potatoes are People Too

            In All Over Creation, Ruth Ozeki continually uses the environment as a backdrop for her story. By interweaving the environment into characters, Ozeki is able to convey lessons on conservation and having a positive relationship with the environment. The characters are not only a reflection of the environment they live in, they are the personification of the environment.

Change and Religion -Draft

Was there a moment or an event I decided to change?

The novel All Over Creation by Ruth Ozeki creates a number of stories that all bind together in the setting of a potato farm community in Idaho. In an interview, Ozeki says that "Nothing exists independently of anything else." From a scientific standpoint we know this statement to be true, because no organism can exist in solitude from the rest of the environment. Every piece of the environment is somehow connected other parts. Each organism in an ecosystem has a responsibility in the system, and the system only functions if all the pieces are working properly  together. Ozeki creates interconnected stories in which characters are linked through relationships that develop throughout the novel.

See rough draft:   /oneworld/changing-our-story-2015/damage-renewal-and-purity

First Draft: /oneworld/changing-our-story-2015/environment-humans 

Exotic Eastern Religions?