Bad Seed: Imperiled Diversities in Ruth Ozeki' s All Over Creation

The author analyzes Ruth Ozeki' s second novel, All Over Creation, and the politics of food and gender that it explores. The struggles within this novel, Stein maintains, for bio- and social diversity are deeply implicated in questions about patriarchal control of women' s reproduction and sexuality. All Over Creation follows tensions between the captains of transnational corporations who seek the genetic control of potatoes and the food activists who resist biogenetic engineering. The conflict between these two, Ozeki shows, has important implications for reproductive justice, for matters of sexuality, and for diversity and free growth. Stein argues that the plot of All Over Creation describes compelling intersections between concerns of mainstream environmentalists and advocates for women' s reproductive choice.