In the mid-20th century, to make her toxic narrative more meaningful, Rachel Carson presented an allegory of a pastoral American town in her book Silent Spring (1962). At the turn of the 21st century, in the same vein, Ruth Ozeki pursues fictional toxic narratives that tackles the dangers of the meet industry in her first novel, My Year of Meats (1998) and the ones of monocultural crops in her second novel, All Over Creation (2003). Especially, in All Over Creation, she focuses on chemical poisoning and toxic bodies through the topic of monocultural potato farming. She expands the issue of toxicity to ask a fundamental question: who owns and controls life. This paper focuses on the complexities of agribusiness such as monoculture, chemical inputs, toxic bodies, as well as corporate capitalism’s attempt to own and control life through biotechnology. This paper further analyses Ozeki’s exploration of two potential methods through which individuals might intervene in this powerful corporate control of life: Japanese-American Momoko’s biodiversity garden and the Seeds of Resistance who are green guerrilla activists against genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Finally, this paper explores the significance of a fictional space created by the non-linear and non-hierarchical form of this novel.
