Lucy Dearlove: This is Lecker. I'm Lucy Dearlove.

This month: A woman eating or not eating with Claire Kohda.

Claire Kohda: 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: 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: 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: 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: Exactly. I think so. Which I find fascinating.

Because it's such a big part of like, life.

Lucy Dearlove: Yeah.

Claire Kohda: And identity. And I mean, it's a big part of my

life, food and cooking.

Lucy Dearlove: Did you always know that Lydia was a vampire?

Did that bit come first?

Claire Kohda: Yes.

Lucy Dearlove: Okay.

Claire Kohda: 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: incidental.

Claire Kohda: Exactly.

Lucy Dearlove: And if there was a genre that it would have

fitted into, into in your head, what would that have been?

Claire Kohda: 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: because millennial is a genre!

Claire Kohda: 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: But how do you feel about that?

Claire Kohda: 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: Okay.

Claire Kohda: 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: People don't have the same cultural context and

reference points.

Claire Kohda: 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: multi faceted! Don't be ridiculous

Claire Kohda: 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: But how, I don't know, how have you found

yourself reacting to that?

Claire Kohda: 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: Yeah, I find that relatable. Yeah.

Claire Kohda: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: That's not who she is!

Claire Kohda: Exactly!

Lucy Dearlove: 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: 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: 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: 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: Okay,

Claire Kohda: 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: Why do you treat chickens so badly in England?

Claire Kohda: 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: 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: 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: Bland sandwiches

Claire Kohda: 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: 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: 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: 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: I just...I didn't know that she thought that until

I wrote it.

Lucy Dearlove: Because it feels so fitting

Claire Kohda: 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: 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

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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.