Foreign Fruit
A Personal History of the Orange
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- £8.99
Publisher Description
WINNER OF SCOTLAND'S NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS FOR DEBUT NON-FICTION
'A bold new voice' IRISH TIMES
'Visceral . . . I could feel every word' ANGELA HUI
'Thoughtful, poetic and clear-sighted' CECILE PIN
The orange is a souvenir of history. Across time, it has been a harbinger of God and doom, fortune and failure, pleasure and suffering. It is a fruit containing metaphors, dreams, mythologies, superstitions, parables and histories within its tough rind. So, what happens when the fruit is peeled and each segment – each moment of history, each meaning in time – is pulled apart?
In this distinct, subversive and intimate hybrid memoir, Katie Goh explores the orange as a means of understanding the world, and herself within it. What she reveals is violence, colonialism, resilience, survival, adaptation – and unexpected beauty and sweetness against all odds.
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.
