A Woman Eating Or Not Eating with Claire Kohda
Illustrations by Ben McDonald
There's one detail that everyone's picked up on in Claire Kohda's debut novel: the fact that the main character, Lydia, is a vampire. But it's actually much more about food than it is about vampires.
Claire explores how the book relates to ethnic identity and colonialism, and the othering of Asian cultures which happens so frequently, and explains how food came to be such a central part of a story whose main character physically can't eat it.
Woman, Eating is published by Virago.
Claire Kohda is a writer and musician; she reviews books for publications like the TLS and her writing was also recently included in the anthology East Side Voices.
Lecker is written and produced by Lucy Dearlove
Ben McDonald creates original illustrations for every episode of Lecker.
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Music is by Blue Dot Sessions.
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Transcript below!
Claire Kohda
Sat, 3/26 7:23PM • 30:01
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
vampire, lydia, eating, book, food, people, japanese, felt, pig, human, colonialism, life, writing, consume, explore, blood, japan, find, mum, read
SPEAKERS
Lucy Dearlove, Claire Kohda
Lucy Dearlove 00:03
This is Lecker. I'm Lucy Dearlove. This month: A woman eating or not eating with Claire Kohda.
Claire Kohda 00:15
So it is about Lydia. And she is in her early 20s. And she is mixed race, part Japanese part Malaysian, partt British, and she's trying to get into the contemporary art world in London. But yeah, a lot of the book is about food and about her being hungry, and about her kind of exploring her cultural identity through food, or I guess, not being able to explore her cultural identity through food because she can't eat food. it's quite hard to explain because once you say vampire, I think like a lot of people get a certain kind of image or a certain book in their minds. Do you know what I mean? So usually, I try to explain what the book is and then say vampire right at the end, but now I've said vampire...[LAUGHS]
Lucy Dearlove 01:22
Claire Kohda's debut novel Woman, Eating comes out this month. Woman, Eating is a book about seeking community and connection through food. But sometimes, ultimately, being unable to do this. It's a book about feeling forced to conceal your true self for fear of persecution, or worse. It's a book about possession, and what it means to try and possess a person or a culture. It's also a book in which the main character, Lydia, is a vampire. I should say at this point that Lydia being a vampire isn't a spoiler for the book. But if you haven't read it, there probably will be some mild spoilers in this episode. I have tried my best to avoid revealing any major plot points. But if you would prefer to read it without any prior privileged information, then I'd probably suggest going away and doing that first. You also might be thinking, Lucy, why are you talking about vampires when this is a food podcast? And to you, I would say Woman, Eating - as the title suggests - is a book more about food than it is about vampires.
Claire Kohda 02:37
What interested me about the vampires is like the fact that no vampire can eat food. Sometimes I think..like in Buffy I think vampires can eat food.
Lucy Dearlove 02:48
Spike and his bloomin' onion! I always remember that, it looks so delicious. But I think historically as canon, vampires can't eat food.
Claire Kohda 02:56
Exactly. I think so. Which I find fascinating. Because it's such a big part of like, life.
Lucy Dearlove 03:02
Yeah.
Claire Kohda 03:03
And identity. And I mean, it's a big part of my life, food and cooking.
Lucy Dearlove 03:08
Did you always know that Lydia was a vampire? Did that bit come first?
Claire Kohda 03:11
Yes.
Lucy Dearlove 03:12
Okay.
Claire Kohda 03:13
It was just there. In my head. I was kind of like, it'd be quite interesting to kind of write a vampire, who was very human and like very relatable and wasn't really a vampire... wasn't any more a monster than a human if that makes sense. I mean, I never thought of it as a horror book for one. Only recently have I realized that I've read something that people consider horror. Which has been like a bit of a shock in itself. But yeah, for me, it was just...Yeah, it was it was never a horror book. It was never really a vampire book. It was just..
Lucy Dearlove 03:54
incidental.
Claire Kohda 03:55
Exactly.
Lucy Dearlove 03:56
And if there was a genre that it would have fitted into, into in your head, what would that have been?
Claire Kohda 04:02
So okay, so interestingly, so recently, with all the kind of press and everything I've been called and Millennial novelist, quite a lot, of course,
Lucy Dearlove 04:14
because millennial is a genre!
Claire Kohda 04:15
Exactly, yeah, right? And then pigeonholed obviously as horror, people have like tried to define it quite a lot and compare it to authors like Sally Rooney, but like the vampire version kind of thing like that.
Lucy Dearlove 04:30
But how do you feel about that?
Claire Kohda 04:32
Um, I don't like it. To put it simply. Basically, my influences...because I write about literature. As a book reviewer, yeah, I write about almost exclusively literature in translation, which means that I read a lot of literature in translation. So most of my influences are actually Japanese, and Korean. And yeah, there's less of a distinction between...basically, like a Japanese novel can have supernatural elements in it, and not be considered horror or sci fi or like fantasy or whatever, it's just a novel. And it's because I mean, I think it's because there's like a long literary tradition in Japan that stretches way back to like folktales. Where Gods shapeshift.
Lucy Dearlove 05:35
Okay.
Claire Kohda 05:36
You know, there are things that could be considered monsters, you know, like Yokai. And, yes, it's a part of the literary history of the country. And so it means that when an author writes something that has like a ghost in it, it's not a ghost story, it's just a novel. And I naively just kind of thought that that would be the same with my book. But of course in England.
Lucy Dearlove 05:57
People don't have the same cultural context and reference points.
Claire Kohda 06:00
Exactly. Exactly. So yeah, my influences were definitely more East Asian. So interestingly, the thing is, the thing about being kind of compared to Sally Rooney, and the book being looked at more as a kind of millennial novel, or horror novel means that not many people are actually talking about the food in the book, because the food is what connects the book to kind of ethnic identity, when the novel was being looked at as kind of like, a millennial novel about a vampire, the food doesn't quite fit into that. So people just aren't talking about it. Yeah. It's almost like an inconvenient aspect of the novel.
Lucy Dearlove 06:52
multi faceted! Don't be ridiculous
Claire Kohda 06:55
So yeah, it's been a little bit strange seeing how it's been, like, put in boxes. And usually it's the, the Asian side that's been left out.
Lucy Dearlove 07:06
But how, I don't know, how have you found yourself reacting to that?
Claire Kohda 07:10
Um, I? I'm kind of...at the beginning, I was kind of like, I mean, I get stressed about everything. I am just generally, like, not good, like, dealing with like life. Yeah, I always kind of, I'm preparing for the worst in every situation.
Lucy Dearlove 07:38
Yeah, I find that relatable. Yeah.
Claire Kohda 07:41
But recently, I've just kind of found myself relaxing a bit more about it. And I'm kind of trusting that it will kind of find its audience, and that people will see what it is. Yeah, they're not just going to read about the book. And then like, read the book themselves and miss all of the stuff about kind of Asian cuisine and stuff.
Lucy Dearlove 08:14
It was the idea of how food could be an integral part of a novel whose main character is physically unable to eat in a human way that I found so interesting about Woman, Eating when I first heard about it. Lydia can only consume blood and talks frequently about how she grew up drinking pig's blood, which her mum would buy under the counter from a butcher in Margate. She's able to consume blood from other creatures, but her mum insisted on only ever buying pig's blood as a kind of self punishment, because she considered pigs to be dirty, and that was all they deserved. Lydia later finds out that pigs are not naturally dirty, but in fact, "the filth of the pig is just symptomatic of the sins of the human". Lydia struggles to get a consistent supply of pig's blood when she moves to London. This is when we meet her. And we experience the constant growing annoying hunger with her. The food that she can't eat, on the other hand, is a constant preoccupation and presence in her life.
Claire Kohda 09:22
When I first started writing her, I knew that she was obsessed with food. That was something that I knew from the beginning. And I think that came partly from I mean, the book isn't autobiographical in any way, but I can understand that kind of obsession with food. For one I do...I do just...I really enjoy cooking and yeah, sharing food with friends and things but also for me, it's always been linked to like migration, and my Japanese family and...Yeah, it's been like a way of me working out who I am. Especially in Thanet, where I grew up, which was so un-diverse. It was like, the one way I could... yeah, explore that part of my life I guess. For Lydia, the internet really is the only way she can access, like cultural identity through food. It's the only way she can access Asian cuisines other than just smelling it, which obviously she does do. It's a way of her kind of living through the people that she's watching.
Lucy Dearlove 10:39
One of the ways in which we as readers, witnessed Lydia interacting with food on the internet is how watching what I eat in a day videos on YouTube. Lydia says, My favorites are the cultural ones because they have the strange feeling of being instruction manuals for becoming whatever ethnicity the person in the video is. Lydia also considers what kind of food she would like if she were fully human. Would she eat Japanese food to strengthen that part of her identity as she says? Or would she reject that and fill herself with as much British food as possible?
Claire Kohda 11:10
Seeing people exploring their cultural heritage through food...I mean, it's something that I enjoy doing as well, at the time I...kind of for research. I was following loads of people on Instagram who were exploring their heritage through food like The Korean Vegan, but also, there's an Instagramer called Gleetz, who's Korean American and Celestial Peach in London, she's amazing. There are a lot of people who are also vegan, and then exploring their Asian heritage. So it's like, they're learning about their cuisines, while also not being able to access all of it, which is something obviously Lydia can relate to, because she can't she can't eat any of it. Yeah, it was always kind of...that was the way into food for her was watching other people eating. People bring food with them whenever they travel, or migrate to different countries, like it's always a part of home that they can take with them. And so like when you're sharing food with people, it's like you're being invited into their home. So really, with Lydia, who was kind of exploring a life that didn't have that. It's very human experience. I think, obviously, it's a very human experience, eating is a very human experience. And with a vampire, and a vampire is like a creature that is both human and not human at the same time, like, yeah, the, they always retain like a human part of themselves. Yeah. And the fact that they can engage in that very human activity and that kind of type of communication I find really, really sad. And it was kind of like ripe for writing about I think.
Lucy Dearlove 13:23
The human side of Lydia is emphasized throughout the book, we might find some of her habits and or even tastes shocking, but many aspects of her behaviour are familiar to us.
Claire Kohda 13:34
My editor, my first editor...so basically, my first editor left the publisher. So my editor editor is someone else. But she suggested - the first editor suggested that Lydia eats, Pig the pug. And I found that so shocking, right? The idea of Lydia eating a pet, a pet. Yeah, and not only a pet, but the pet of someone who was becoming a friend,
Lucy Dearlove 14:10
That's not who she is!
Claire Kohda 14:11
Exactly!
Lucy Dearlove 14:12
Pig the pug belongs to Maria, a character in the book who has a studio in the same artists complex that Lydia does. In the scene, where we meet, pick the pug. Lydia is kind of drawn into a communal dinner that some of the artists in the studio are preparing and eating together is this incredibly sort of wholesome domestic scene...they're using vegetables that they've grown themselves as we find out that many of the artists grow tomatoes or mushrooms or herbs or greens in their own studios. And there's a moment where Lydia believes that she could participate and that she could eat and then she realises that it's impossible for her. But it's kind of one of the only scenes in the book where we really see her being involved in a communal experience, and yet being completely separate from it.
Claire Kohda 15:11
She would be so devastated if she did that. I don't think she could live with herself. I think she'd be more devastated eating Pig the Pug than if she ate a human. And it's like, yeah, I wanted her morals, I guess, to be very relatable too.
Lucy Dearlove 15:33
So, I didn't know that you were vegan until you told me...obviously, like, why would I know? It's not like I specifically asked, but I just think like, sort of in the context, I don't know, there's just something really, like funny to me about a vegan writing a novel that is actually quite graphic, you know, in some ways, like not, you know, gratuite, gratuitously so, but like, we hear about blood, and there's quite, you know, there's graphic descriptions of what Lydia is eating and how was that? I mean it's not like you've never eaten meat!
Claire Kohda 16:10
Yeah, I did used to eat meat. I guess. One part of my kind of experience of eating that made it into the novel is that when I consume anything, I guess I'm a very like, over active thinker, is that the right phrase`/ I can't help but think of the life of the thing that I'm eating, even if it's just like, broccoli. I just...it's...maybe it's because I'm writing so much at the time. But I can't help but think of the stories behind essentially everything. And it means that when I have eaten things like dairy or any animal products, I am kind of thinking about the whole story of where that product has come from. I wanted that to be Lydia's experience, when she actually does consume blood of another animal, that she experiences its life. Maybe that partly comes from Buddhism, as well. It's gonna sound really weird. I'm not sure if I'm Buddhist.
Lucy Dearlove 17:16
Okay,
Claire Kohda 17:16
I might be. But it's another one of those things were growing up in England, Buddhism was always associated with spiritualism, wellness and mindfulness. And they were all very kind of, I guess, quite white things. Yeah. I never really felt like I could find a way to explore Buddhism that was Japanese. I guess in Buddhism, at least, this is how I interpret it, all life is equal because of things like reincarnation. Like I remember when I was very young...I'm going off on a tangent here. My Baa-Baa, my mum's mum just died. When I was four. I hadn't learned anything about reincarnation before. I'd never heard the word, I didn't know anything about the concept. And I was in the garden. And this really big Bumblebee came like buzzing by. And it felt like it said, Hello. And I remember in my head, I felt like I knew that that was my Baa-Baa. And I was, you know, I was very young. So it was very simple for me at that age. I was like, Yeah, that's fine. She flew off. And so since then, I think like, in my little four year old mind, the life inside that Bee was completely equal to the life inside my own body. And I think that's something that Lydia feels, I think, as well, but at the same time, she is kind of baffled at times, by the fact that her diet is different, but actually not that different. So there's a part where she's looking...I think it's when she's trying to source pig's blood. And she like find, finds restaurants that are serving like blood sausage and stuff. And then she says that it's just, it's like, not really fair for she's stigmatized for drinking blood when humans have it, but just in different shapes. And I think that partly came from...in fact, I think it definitely came from this, but I've never thought about it before. I think it comes from, like the stigmatisation of Asian cultures being more cruel than Western cultures when it comes to meat consumption. I find that really baffling when we have like a lot of cruelty in the way we consume meat in the West as well. I think that that definitely fed into it. I've spent my whole life like being asked questions like why do they eat whale in Japan, for instance. It's like well, why should I know I mean, for one, like,
Lucy Dearlove 20:01
Why do you treat chickens so badly in England?
Claire Kohda 20:05
Exactly. And I find it really interesting like when like talking about whales specifically, that there are obviously cultures in the West that also eat whales. In Scandinavia, right. Yeah. But it's, I think it's quite easy to like other Japanese people and kind of like, see it as this thing that like the other does. But yeah, there's like, I think there's a lot of kind of stigmatisation over about Asians kind of being like, inherently, like cruel or evil, which I find really interesting. The idea of kind of, like, cruelty when we look at, like, this thing that we consider as being other. And then yeah, I think Lydia, just because of what she is, is very aware of that. She can never really show who she is because of that, even though she's like, living....you know, she's just having like, the surplus blood from like, the pigs that are being slaughtered for sausages anyway, right. She could never actually...I mean, she can't just go and get a cup of blood and drink it. You know what I mean? In front of people? Yeah,
Lucy Dearlove 21:15
yeah. When her mother...the detail about her mum sending her to school with a little flask, yeah, that she has to hide, you know, that she can drink out of, that she can't show anyone what's in it. It was just really sad.
Claire Kohda 21:24
Yeah, the thing with the flask, I think was also like, I wish now looking back that I had, like, said yes, to my mom cooking Japanese food from lunchboxes like, that would have been so nice. But I know that as a child, I would have been so embarrassed. Yeah. And like bullied for it. And so I had like, I kind of made my mum pack me the most awful.
Lucy Dearlove 21:49
Bland sandwiches
Claire Kohda 21:51
Exactly. The worse it was, the better, because I fit in. It's kind of like sad to think of kids having to like hold, hide their culture, in the food that they're eating.
Lucy Dearlove 22:03
Something that came into my mind many times while reading Woman, Eating with how it relates to colonialism. There are direct references to the history and reality of countries being colonised. But there are also subtler parallels. Whether it's in the life of Lydia's Malaysian mother, Julie, who was turned into a vampire by a British man, or in the practice of contemporary art collecting. There's a character in the novel called Gideon, who - it's not too much of a spoiler to say this - is a straight up creep. And one of the things we learn about him is that he has acquired several pieces of Lydia's dad's art for his collection.
Claire Kohda 22:43
There's so much I could say about this. So one thing is that Japanese culture and also Korean culture now, I think, a lot of people feel like they can kind of consume it, as if it's almost like a lifestyle, as opposed to an actual culture. So many people tell me that they really love Japan and Japanese things. And in my mind, I'm always thinking, that doesn't include Japanese things like the gender inequality, right? The things you know, the the reality of kind of what Japan is like, as a country, I find it really hard to articulate, but basically, Japan feels like it's consumed a lot and commodified a lot and that happens in art as well. You know, it's...there's a kind of...art allows people to consume a culture and feel like they're consuming a culture. So Gideon, Gideon collects Lydia's dad's art, and he collects a lot of in inverted commas world art. I haven't kind of come across many things that explore colonialism....in Asian countries, right? Yeah, yeah. And a lot of Asian countries have also been colonised by Western countries. And I wanted that to be a part of the novel. And in the novel, Julie, Lydia's mother believes that the origin of vampires is in colonialism, and that it's like a symptom of colonialism that there was like a man who took so much of what wasn't his that he was like, cursed to take what wasn't his for like eternity. Yeah, Malaysia's country that has been colonised by...So Lydia is Malaysian British Japanese and Malaysia is a country that has been colonized by the British and the Japanese, which I find really interesting. I wanted to explore that a little bit. I wouldn't say it's like central to the book, but it is also Lydia's kind of origin as both a vampire and a human. But yeah, so colonialism. There are so many, I guess strands of the novel that it touches upon. So the art collecting but also the origin of vampires full stop. And then Lydia's kind of cultural heritage, the fact that Julie, her mother was turned into a vampire by a British coloniser, and then later met Lydia's dad, who's Japanese and Lydia speculates that maybe she was interested in him and interested in like, kind of his art and kind of like consuming his life, in a sense, because Malaysia had been colonised by Japan as well in the past. Yeah, Julie, Julie's a character, I think, that has me she has like a lot of kind of trauma, because these are all things that she actually experienced. And that's the kind of fun thing about a vampire. They kind of Yeah, for like, you know, they can live for centuries. Exactly.
Lucy Dearlove 26:00
That idea that, that you're talking about that Julie believes that vampires originated with, with the colonisers arriving in, in countries like Malaysia. Is that an idea that you had read elsewhere? Or was that an idea that, that you wrote kind of as an original proposition?
Claire Kohda 26:20
I just...I didn't know that she thought that until I wrote it.
Lucy Dearlove 26:24
Because it feels so fitting
Claire Kohda 26:27
Yeah. I, I mean, I felt like, it sounds like such a cliche to say that, like, my characters were kind of like, alive or whatever, but, but I really felt like, while I was writing, I was just discovering things about them. Right. And that part just came out while I was writing it, and I was kind of like, I didn't know, like, yeah, it was a surprise to me, too. But I was always interested in making having Julie come from Malaysia specifically just because of the history of Britain and Japan, which are my two heritages. I was drawn to the figure of the vampire, because of its kind of like, dual existence, you know, and the fact that it's inherently divided with a vampire because the fact that vampire only eats blood it's like the vampire no matter where it is, it's a foreigner. Yeah, like I think for me anyway, like like a lot of feeling foreign comes down to food. Yeah, with Lydia she is just foreign absolutely everywhere. I honestly don't know what I want people to take from it. Okay. I think yeah, it's...one thing I do fear is that people come to it expecting a vampire book. And really it's a book about a woman eating or not eating. And I do you worry that people will be disappointed at how disappointing a vampire Lydia is I guess in a way. [LAUGHS]
Lucy Dearlove 28:36
Woman, Eating by Claire Kohda is published by Virago and is available now in all good bookshops. I urge you to get a copy and meet Lydia yourself. Thanks very much to Claire for taking the time on a sunny afternoon to speak to me. We were sitting outside by railway line in Canterbury, so you might have heard the trains passing and the birds singing. Claire also contributed to the recent anthology East Side Voices which I haven't read yet, but I'm really looking forward to This episode was written and produced by me, Lucy Dearlove. If you'd like to support Lecker you can donate to the patreon at patreon.com/leckerpodcast. There's going to be some things happening on the Patreon very soon, so it's good time to sign up just saying! It's three pounds a month. Ben McDonald creates original illustrations for every episode of Lecker and they're beautiful. You can see them on Instagram and Twitter at LeckerPodcast. I'm also posting sporadically on Tik Tok with the same handle. There's a transcript of this episode available at leckerpodcast.com. Music is by Blue Dot sessions. I'll be back in your podcast feeds it with another episode of Lecker next month. Thanks for listening.