Katie Goh: “I want people to engage with the politics of oranges”

Katie Goh​’s debut book, For­eign Fruit, is part mem­oir, part botan­i­cal his­to­ry, and part cul­tur­al crit­i­cism. It fol­lows the jour­ney of the orange – from its ori­gins on the Tibetan plateau as a hybrid of pome­lo and man­darin to the neat­ly waxed, net­ted fruit stacked high in super­mar­ket aisles. Along the way, she unpacks how the orange is tied to colo­nial­ism, migra­tion, resilience, and survival.

For the Irish-born, now Edin­burgh-based writer and crit­ic Goh – who grew up in a Chi­nese-Malaysian-Irish house­hold – peel­ing an orange isn’t just peel­ing an orange. She want­ed to see what sto­ries she could unrav­el from its long rib­bon­ing peel. For­eign Fruit is about pulling apart the seg­ments of his­to­ry, myth, and mean­ing wrapped inside its tough rind. Across cen­turies, the fruit has been a sym­bol of both for­tune and mis­for­tune, plea­sure and suf­fer­ing, God and doom. It’s a sou­venir of the past, car­ry­ing with it sto­ries of trade, con­quest, and adaptation.

Her own sto­ry is entwined in this cit­rus odyssey. She traces the fruit’s jour­ney from her grand­par­ents’ ances­tral vil­lage in Longyan, Chi­na, to Lunar New Year fes­tiv­i­ties with extend­ed fam­i­ly in Kuala Lumpur, and final­ly to the orange groves of Cal­i­for­nia – reflect­ing on her fam­i­ly his­to­ry and iden­ti­ty along the way.

When Huck spoke to Goh over Zoom last month, she laughed and admit­ted she’s some­how become the unof­fi­cial spokesper­son for oranges. Not that she minds – she’s not sick of them yet.

• Read next: Grow­ing up behind the counter of a Chi­nese take­away in Wales

Let’s start with the title of the book For­eign Fruit. I guess, even in the name itself, it feels like such a loaded title that’s deeply per­son­al to you. 

Wow, we’re straight in the deep end already. Yeah, you’re right. I kept think­ing, ​‘Am I the for­eign fruit? Try­ing to make it in an alien envi­ron­ment?’ At the end of the day, it’s a book about oranges, but it was impor­tant for me to cap­ture the oth­er side of the book, which is so much about my her­itage, espe­cial­ly as a queer woman of East and South East Asian descent, through dif­fer­ent times where I felt ​‘for­eign’ or ​‘exot­ic’. The orange is such a mun­dane fruit and an object that a lot of us would pick up and take for grant­ed. I sup­pose in the book, I want­ed to ​‘oth­er’ the orange a lit­tle bit and turn it into this for­eign, cringe, beguil­ing object that moved from Chi­na along the Silk Roads to Europe and Amer­i­ca. I want­ed peo­ple to think a lit­tle bit dif­fer­ent­ly about some­thing so com­mon. Plus, allit­er­a­tion is always nice, and the title has stayed like that since the proposal. 

For­eign Fruit is described as a ​‘hybrid mem­oir’, which com­bines mem­oir, his­to­ry of the orange, and cul­tur­al analy­sis. How did you approach struc­tur­ing the book to weave these dif­fer­ent threads together?

I’ve always been inter­est­ed in per­son­al writ­ing that tack­les his­tor­i­cal big-pic­ture writ­ing but also takes the self into account. I guess, for me, it began with Covid. At that time, there was a sharp rise in Anti-Asian racism and hate crimes. I was look­ing into find­ing a way to write about that as a per­son of mixed race her­itage in the UK and how that feels con­nect­ed to the world and things like dias­po­ra, his­to­ry and vio­lence. The orange became a use­ful metaphor and a way of fram­ing how mean­ing changes and how some­thing can trans­form over time. I was inter­est­ed in find­ing a way to write about your­self that moves beyond the frame­work of very basic iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics that are real­ly com­mon in mag­a­zines, online arti­cles and news­pa­pers. It’s the sort of writ­ing I used to do a lot of, actu­al­ly, very top­i­cal things – why racism is bad or these black and white moments – but it just flat­tened people’s expe­ri­ences. The orange tells us about his­to­ry, the way it’s moved across the world and also big­ger issues like glob­al­i­sa­tion, cli­mate change and migra­tion. I want­ed to cap­ture that hybrid­i­ty and not feel like I had to seg­ment things into cat­e­gories. To me, it is what it feels like to be a per­son in the world. Not one thing is sep­a­rate from the oth­er, but how it’s a mix­ture of these things weav­ing togeth­er. This was my attempt at try­ing to cap­ture that feeling. 

Exact­ly, I feel that as a per­son of colour, we’re con­stant­ly wary of only get­ting the space to talk about iden­ti­ty, race and pain through a very spe­cif­ic lens. It’s almost this tick-box trau­ma-min­ing tightrope. 

I did a lot of that style of writ­ing when I first start­ed out as a jour­nal­ist. I don’t feel like I’m above it at all, but it’s so sad, like, at that time, it was the only way to get into news­pa­pers and mag­a­zines. I think that says a lot about the indus­try more than the indi­vid­ual writ­ers want­i­ng to write about these things.

Con­sid­er­ing this, were you wary of shar­ing inti­mate details of your life? Espe­cial­ly the moments of see­ing your fam­i­ly for the first time after Covid. Was it par­tic­u­lar­ly chal­leng­ing or cathar­tic to write these reflec­tive moments?

Yeah, it was emo­tion­al to write, but it was also kind of impor­tant as well. I real­ly want to cap­ture my expe­ri­ences, put mem­o­ries down on paper and have the space to revis­it. I don’t think any­one in my fam­i­ly is real­ly angry about it, but I don’t think I’ll go back to our fam­i­ly vil­lage for a long time in the future. But it felt spe­cial to be more inti­mate and tender. 

• Read next: Inside the UK’s first fes­ti­val ded­i­cat­ed to East and South­east Asian alter­na­tive cul­ture and music

Did you feel like your approach to writ­ing changed when you first start­ed com­pared to the end? Did it help you process a lot of things?

It’s one of those things where you begin writ­ing it, and then you’ve got a mil­lion more ques­tions and end up more con­fused. I think that’s a good thing. It feels more real than clos­ing the Word doc­u­ment and being like, ​“Wow, I know every­thing about what it’s like to be a per­son of colour.” I think that would be wor­ry­ing and con­cern­ing. For some­one who didn’t study his­to­ry that much at school, I’m sur­prised that his­to­ry became such a big part of the book. I think it’s chal­leng­ing because you can eas­i­ly roman­ti­cise the past or how we can project our own inter­pre­ta­tions onto things, which is some­thing that his­to­ri­ans have wres­tled with for a very long time. I start­ed out won­der­ing where oranges came from. I wasn’t expect­ing to end up writ­ing a book about ancient Chi­nese mar­kets, the Empire and scurvy. I think the orange helped me jump between dif­fer­ent times and places.

How do you think we can engage with fruit and not take it for grant­ed? There’s so much his­to­ry in terms of larg­er themes of move­ment and pow­er. How can peo­ple engage with this more crit­i­cal­ly while still cel­e­brat­ing its joys?

It starts with edu­ca­tion. So much of British his­to­ry is wrapped up in empire. How it was all about con­quer­ing lands and extract­ing nat­ur­al resources and how that inter­sects with glob­al­i­sa­tion and sup­ply chains. I don’t think peo­ple put that togeth­er a lot of the time. Food has always been polit­i­cal in terms of who has access to food, how food is deliv­ered to us and how food is used as a bar­gain­ing chip. Look at Gaza and how Pales­tini­ans were forced to cut down their decades-old orange and olive trees. Cut­ting down ancient trees so that they could use it as fuel when­ev­er they were being besieged by Israeli forces. That is such a shock­ing image. I want peo­ple to engage with the pol­i­tics of oranges and, by exten­sion, the nat­ur­al world as well. 

What was the most sur­pris­ing and unex­pect­ed thing you learned while writ­ing this book?

I learnt a lot about myself. What it feels like to be a per­son in a world that’s very vio­lent with a lot of suf­fer­ing. I ulti­mate­ly had a joy­ous expe­ri­ence when writ­ing, but there were chal­leng­ing parts where I had to research and write about ter­ri­ble mas­sacres and vio­lence. Those things felt very far away in his­to­ry, but they were things that felt close to me. I think that was because so much of the writ­ing was con­nect­ing the dots across time. How oranges have moved and how they sur­vived across his­to­ry. I’m blown away by oranges’ resilience and their abil­i­ty to adapt to new cli­mates and sur­vive, which felt real­ly encouraging.

Fruit can be both a source of com­fort and a reminder of dis­place­ment. How do you think we can rec­on­cile these ten­sions in the way we talk about food and migration?

We’ve become very detached from the nat­ur­al world. Few of us will vis­it or work on a farm, and we don’t see the labour that goes into it. We take things like an orange, a car­rot or a slice of bacon for grant­ed every day and how much ener­gy has gone into pro­duc­ing those things. Dur­ing the Covid lock­downs, I did some gar­den­ing for the first time and grew my own veg­eta­bles. I wish I could have grown oranges, but they would not have sur­vived in Ire­land. It was an enlight­en­ing expe­ri­ence that took months for all these things to grow, and then I ate them all with­in a sec­ond, and they were gone. It’s so won­der­ful to see some­thing grow from seed to plant and nur­ture your­self. I think for those ten­sions you talk about, we real­ly need to be more con­nect­ed to the food we eat and think more thought­ful­ly about where things come from, the sup­ply chain struc­ture and the food industry.

For­eign Fruit is pub­lished by Canon­gate on May 8.

Angela Hui is a food and cul­ture writer. Fol­low her on Insta­gram.

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