The subtitle of Katie Goh’s Foreign Fruit – A Personal History of the Orange – hints at the hybrid nature of this smart memoir, a book that deals with Goh’s own personal search for identity and meaning as much as the history of the world’s most popular citrus fruit.
The two stories intertwine wonderfully, starting in China with the mythical origins of the orange tree, and switching to Goh visiting relatives of her own there, trying to get a sense of how she can relate to lives lived so differently to her own.
Get the latest news and insight into how the Big Issue magazine is made by signing up for the Inside Big Issue newsletter
Goh grew up as a queer person with Chinese and Malaysian roots in predominantly white Northern Ireland, and she eloquently makes the argument that she is as much a product of hybridisation, manipulation and colonisation as oranges are.
The fruit, therefore, becomes a bigger metaphor, and Goh feels much affinity for oranges as she discusses in detail the complicated way that she tries to reconcile her past with the expectations on her in the present.
Goh has predominantly worked as a journalist before now, with just a single previous book called The End: Surviving The World Through Imagined Disasters. That book demonstrated the author’s fine handling of prose and ideas, a fluent and welcoming style that tackles big ideas lightly with entertaining flair.
