Although it is an adult fiction novel, the plot follows a young Japanese girl throughout her years in middle school.

The major themes of the novel include comparing a mother-daughter relationship with a father-daughter one, finding one's identity, and the politics of Japanese Hawaiian culture in a white America.

Sections of the novel were adapted for the award-winning film, Fishbowl [1](2005), by Hawaii filmmaker Kayo Hatta, that aired nationally on PBS in 2006.

The novel's characters and setting stay true to Lois-Ann Yamanaka's local upbringing on the Big Island of Hawaii.

Written in both English and Hawaiian Pidgin, Wild Meat and the Bully Burgers is a coming-of-age first-person narrative of Lovey Nariyoshi, a local Japanese girl growing up in Hilo, Hawaii in the 1970s.

During the anti-Japanese wave that flowed through the United States during this time period, Lovey looks back at all of the key events and people in her life that help shape the young girl she becomes in the end.

One day Hubert brings home a black-and-white calf that Lovey's sister Calhoon names Bully.

Part One begins when Lovey is in the sixth grade and she and her best friend Jerry are watching a Shirley Temple movie.

Other characters in this section include Katy – the Nariyoshi's pregnant teenage neighbor that teaches Lovey that babies come out of a woman's vagina and not the other end.

Larry is always violent towards Lovey and Cal and Jerry, later killing their pet Koi in Part Three because they watch him and his girlfriend Crystal have sex in her bedroom.

We are given fuller descriptions of the Rays of the Rising Sun, a YMCA club consisting of the most popular girls in Lovey's class.

And as mentioned before, Larry kills Lovey and Calhoon's pet Koi out of anger - Crystal gets pregnant and her mother takes her to Japan to abort the baby.

His quest for popularity with their classmates leaves Lovey alone at times, but he always comes back to her when these "friendships" do not work out.

Verva constantly compares Lovey to Cal, wondering why her older daughter can't be like the younger one.

She lives on the island of Molokai and Verva sends Lovey to spend a few weeks with her after she keeps getting nightmares of the Devil and Hell from "The Teacher."

Grandma teaches Lovey about the true love of God[1] Rays of the Rising Dawn - a YMCA girls club consisting of characters Traci Kihara, Gina Oshiro, Laura Murayama, Jodie Louie, Lori Shigemura, Rhonda Whang and Kandi Mitsuda.

Lori has a bigger part in the novel than the rest of the girls because she has a constant crush on Jerry throughout their years in middle school.

The major themes of the novel that is discussed by Literary Critics include comparing a mother-daughter relationship with a father-daughter one, finding one's identity and the politics of Japanese Hawaiian culture in White America.

[3] In her article, “Spreading Traditions: Lois-Ann Yamanaka’s Bildungsroman,” Serena Fusco claims that “by the end of [the] novel the main character, a teenage girl, has acquired a great deal of knowledge, which enables her to achieve self-awareness and get over the racial and sexual abuse perpetrated on her by the patriarchal society (197).

In his article “I wish you a land,” Rocio Davis says that the fact the Lovey speaks Pidgin is an example of how her character is separated from Western ideals (59).

And by this separation, Lovey and the other characters in Wild Meat try to find their identities amidst political struggles (47).