Foreign Fruit by Katie Goh
Named A Best Debut Book of 2025 by Debutiful
Named A Best Food Memoir of 2025 by Table Magazine
“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?
- Sale Date
- ISBN
- 9781963108316
- Page Count
- 240
- Language
- English
- Imprint
- Tin House
Meet the Author
Katie Goh“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 Ireland, Katie felt herself at odds with the culture and politics around her. As a teenager, Katie visits her ancestral home in Longyan, China, with her family to better understand her roots, but doesn’t find the easy, digestible answers she hoped for.
In her mid-twenties, when her grandmother falls ill, she ventures again to the land of her ancestors, Malaysia, where more questions of self and belonging are raised. In her travels and reflections, she navigates histories that she wants to understand, but has never truly felt a part of. Like the story of the orange, Katie finds that simple and extractable explanations—even about a seemingly simple fruit—are impossible. The story that unfolds is Katie’s incredible endeavor to flesh out these contradictions, to unpeel the layers of personhood; a reflection on identity through the cipher of the orange. Along the way, the orange becomes so much more than just a fruit—it emerges as a symbol, a metaphor, and a guide. Foreign Fruit: A Personal History of the Orange is a searching, wide-ranging, seamless weaving of storytelling with research and a meditative, deeply moving encounter with the orange and the self.
Praise for Foreign Fruit
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“Documenting the orange across time and space, Foreign Fruit is a powerful meditation on the relationships between commodities and colonialism, place and produce, self and history.”
Full Stop -
“Brings nuance and deep thought to questions of what it means to be foreign, and what it means to belong…. [As] readable as a listicle and conversational as a coffee date.”
Colorado Review -
“This is the type of nonfiction I love. A blend of memoir and criticism that explores a topic in a way I never encountered. Goh’s writing is inventive and intelligent.”
Debutiful, A Best Debut Nonfiction Book of 2025
About the Imprint
Where the literary canon of tomorrow is born. Critically acclaimed titles that challenge, illuminate, and linger. Discover award-winning fiction, nonfiction, and poetry from emerging voices you’ll say you found first.
