Foreign Fruit: A Personal History of the Orange

Journalist Goh draws parallels between her multiracial heritage and the history of citrus fruit in this ambitious but incohate debut. In a promising prologue, she recalls eating oranges while considering whether to accept an assignment to write about the March 2021 Atlanta spa shooting of six Asian women. The juxtaposition sparked an idea: all commercial citrus can trace its genetics to three distinct sources, just as Goh could trace hers to Malaysia, China, and Ireland. Goh declined the assignment but decided to travel to her Chinese and Malaysian homelands in hopes she might untangle her lifelong sense of cultural dislocation. Meanwhile, she dove obsessively into the study of oranges, linking their proliferation across the globe to colonialism. Unfortunately, Goh’s contemplation of the push-pull of a mixed racial identity treads mostly in cliché, and the orange conceit, though initially fascinating, comes to feel like information overload, peeling off in so many directions that it undermines Goh’s personal narrative. There’s a certain thrill to seeing an author take such a big swing, but unfortunately this one misses. Agent: Matthew Turner, RCW Literary. (May)