Foreign Fruit
A Personal History of the Orange
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
"A sharp-sweet memoir of change, identity and hybridity. I loved it."
― Katherine May, author of Wintering
Per person, oranges are the most consumed fruit in the world. Across the world, no matter how remote or cold or incongruous a climate is, oranges will be there.
What stories could I unravel from the orange's long ribboning peel? What new meanings could I find in its variousness, as it moves from east to west and from familiar to foreign?
What begins as a curiosity into the origins of the orange soon becomes a far-reaching odyssey of citrus for Katie Goh. Katie follows the complicated history of the orange from east-to-west and west-to-east, from a luxury item of European kings and Chinese emperors, to a modest fruit people take for granted. This investigation parallels Katie’s powerful search into her own heritage. Growing up queer in a Chinese-Malaysian-Irish household in the north of Ireland, Katie felt herself at odds with the culture and politics around her. As a teenager, Katie visits her ancestral home in Longyan, China, with her family to better understand her roots, but doesn’t find the easy, digestible answers she hoped for.
In her mid-twenties, when her grandmother falls ill, she ventures again to the land of her ancestors, Malaysia, where more questions of self and belonging are raised. In her travels and reflections, she navigates histories that she wants to understand, but has never truly felt a part of. Like the story of the orange, Katie finds that simple and extractable explanations―even about a seemingly simple fruit―are impossible. The story that unfolds is Katie’s incredible endeavor to flesh out these contradictions, to unpeel the layers of personhood; a reflection on identity through the cipher of the orange. Along the way, the orange becomes so much more than just a fruit―it emerges as a symbol, a metaphor, and a guide. Foreign Fruit: A Personal History of the Orange is a searching, wide-ranging, seamless weaving of storytelling with research and a meditative, deeply moving encounter with the orange and the self.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist Goh draws parallels between her multiracial heritage and the history of citrus fruit in this ambitious but inchoate debut. In a promising prologue, she recalls eating oranges while considering whether to accept an assignment to write about the March 2021 Atlanta spa shooting of six Asian women. The juxtaposition sparked an idea: all commercial citrus can trace its genetics to three distinct sources, just as Goh could trace hers to Malaysia, China, and Ireland. Goh declined the assignment but decided to travel to her Chinese and Malaysian homelands in hopes she might untangle her lifelong sense of cultural dislocation. Meanwhile, she dove obsessively into the study of oranges, linking their proliferation across the globe to colonialism. Unfortunately, Goh's contemplation of the push-pull of a mixed racial identity treads mostly in cliché, and the orange conceit, though initially fascinating, comes to feel like information overload, peeling off in so many directions that it undermines Goh's personal narrative. There's a certain thrill to seeing an author take such a big swing, but unfortunately this one misses.
