"The morning after a white man murdered six Asian women, I ate five oranges." So opens Katie Goh's Foreign Fruit, a poetic and emotional rumination on identity, colonialism, and, of course, oranges. More than a simple history of the orange, Foreign Fruit takes readers to Northern Ireland, Malaysia, China, and California in pursuit of the fruit and family.
The lush text will make readers long for a juicy citrus fruit--one should be at hand at all times during reading. Readers journey on the Silk Road, in galleries of Dutch still-life paintings featuring impossible arrangements of citrus and porcelain, to Goh's aunt's favorite (and secret) pomelo farmer in Malaysia, and to the last surviving parent tree of the classic navel orange. Along the way, Goh always comes back to her opening line and to her identity as a woman of Irish and East Asian ancestry. She ponders the uptick in violence against Asians during the Covid-19 pandemic and reflects on the plans for a memorial honoring the victims of Los Angeles's 1871 Chinatown massacre. She eats countless oranges, both alone and surrounded by grandparents, aunts, and uncles in Malaysia.
Readers may never look at sky-high piles of gleaming fruit at markets the same way again after learning the history of how European colonizers spread citrus trees to nearly every island they passed on their voyages to stave off scurvy. Part history, part memoir, Foreign Fruit is an excellent choice for readers interested in the continuing impacts of European colonization across the globe or anyone who has a passion for citrus. --Alyssa Parssinen, freelance reviewer and former bookseller