Diethylstilbestrol, ecocriticism, nation: Ruth Ozeki goes where no one has gone before

The author argues that Ruth Ozeki's My Year of Meats (1998) offers great opportunities and challenges for ecocriticism because it complicates ecocriticism. The novel blurs boundaries between fiction and fact, problematizes easy notions about cultural diversification and national identity, and radically nudges the very genre of the novel itself in a bold new direction, one eminently fit for an age of increasingly diversified media. It is in the affective ethics of activist engagement, however, that this novel is most truly remarkable: it is this that the article explores in detail.