Foreign Fruit

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"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