December 14, 2016 - 18:38
In her novel “All Over Creation” Ruth Ozeki explores the relationship between identity and the environment. Her characters illustrate this, along with the crops they grow. Lloyd and Momoko Fuller know that farming is hard work, especially when you’re growing Russet Burbank potatoes. In order to produce the ideal potato, you have to provide the perfect soil. Lloyd and Momoko applied this rule to the way they raised their daughter Yumi. They believed that as long as they gave her love, kept her in line, and had a firm grip on her, then she would grow up to be the good Methodist potato farmer they wanted her to be. Unfortunately for the Fullers, children are harder to raise than potatoes. What her parents believed was a nourishing environment eventually became toxic to Yumi – she was not the person they expected her to become. Because the environment she was raised in was suffocating her identity, Yumi ran away to a place that wasn’t as stable but gave her more room to grow.
This puzzled, infuriated, and worried Lloyd. His tried and true method of producing a superior crop had failed. His daughter, who he worked so hard to cultivate, seemed to have been a “bad seed”, as Carl Unger said. Here he had provided Yumi fertile soil, filled with love and nutrients. What he didn’t see was that his judgements of his daughter ate away at her worse than the dreaded Colorado potato beetle ever could. So, Yumi transplanted herself into distant soil. Her new environment was not as stable or nutritious, but it was free of the parasites and weeds that plagued her old home. Berkeley was not as welcoming or safe, but it gave Yumi plenty of room for her identity to grow.
Twenty-five years later, upon her return to Liberty Falls, Yumi realizes just how much she has grown. Her parents and her childhood friend Cass clearly see the change, too. Although they recognize parts of her old identity, they see many other identities Yumi has adopted since her departure. Two of her most prominent identities that they see is her identity as a professional and as a mother. As a college professor, Yumi is far more polished and respected than they could have ever imagined. It is a far cry from farming potatoes in Idaho. Although they all realized that Yumi probably hadn’t left Idaho to become a potato farmer somewhere else, they were still intrigued to learn that she is a professor.
As a mother, Yumi is nothing like her traditional, strict parents. In fact, it is the identities of her parents that shaped the way she identifies as a mother. Their method of raising her became toxic once she reached adolescence, causing her to run away. Her childhood led Yumi to conclude that acceptance fosters mental and emotional growth in children more than being judgemental does. Because her parents were so authoritarian in their approach to parenting, Yumi decided to be authoritative in hers.
In the novel, Yumi explains that in Lloyd’s three thousand acres of monoculture, any plant that was not the crop he expected was ripped from the soil to restore the order he desired. Yumi then says, “That’s what it felt like when I was growing up, like I was a random fruit in a field of genetically identical potatoes.” (Ozeki 4). This feeling of disconnect between Yumi’s identity and her environment was what prompted her to transplant herself into a different environment. Because she was not the perfect daughter that Lloyd had intended to grow, she felt destined to be weeded out of the family. By running away to a different environment, Yumi freed herself from the judgements of her parents and gave herself enough room for her identity to grow.
Ozeki, Ruth L. All Over Creation. New York: Viking, 2003. Print.