Katie Goh: Foreign Fruit, A Personal History of the Orange

The orange we know, waxed in vats, gathered in red netting and stacked in supermarket displays, is not the same orange that grew from the first straggling orange grove that took root on the Tibetan plateau, part pomelo and part mandarin. The orange is a souvenir of history. Across time, it has been a harbinger of God and doom, fortune and failure, pleasure and suffering. It is a fruit containing metaphors, dreams, mythologies, superstitions, parables and histories within its tough rind. So, what happens when the fruit is peeled and each segment – each moment of history, each meaning in time – is pulled apart?

Foreign Fruit follows the migration of the orange across history, from its site of origin in China, across the silk roads of Central Asia into Europe and then to the Americas, including California where it first became the commodified product we know today. This fascinating journey tells multiple, complex and intersecting histories: of migration, globalisation, religion, art, colonialism and consumerism. In parallel with the journey of the orange east to west, Katie also reckons with her own identity as she heads from Northern Ireland to the Malay Archipelago and southern China to make sense of her heritage and to understand how the children of immigrants seek stability.