Kylie Lee Baker is the author of the new novel Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng. Her other books include The Keeper of Night duology.
Q: What inspired you to write Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng?
A: As an Asian American woman, the rise of hate against Asians at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic had a profound impact on me, my friends, and my family. I think horror is great vehicle for exploring righteous rage and justice, so I channeled my feelings from that time into a horror novel.
As for the folkloric elements, I came across an image of a Chinese needle-neck ghost, which is basically a ghost with a very long, thin neck. The image has haunted me ever since, so I desperately needed to make everyone else suffer with me.
Q: How was the book’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A: “Bat Eater” is a key phrase in the book. It encapsulates everything that many people in America think about Asians: that we’re dirty, uncivilized, at odds with Western values, and that because of these flaws, we are solely responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic.
It lumps together Asians with Asian Americans, reflecting how we are perpetual foreigners in our own country, never granted the privilege of belonging.
It is a phrase that flattens our experiences and assumes all of us are responsible for and complicit in the actions of one of us.
It is “proof” for many people that the biases they long held against us were justified. It dehumanizes us, likening us to animals. It paints us as predators and aggressors. It is a rationalization for physical and sexual violence against us.
This book is largely about challenging these stereotypes, so I felt strongly that Bat Eater needed to be the title.
Q: Did you know how the novel would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?
A: I always knew that I wanted the ending to reflect how the real world is much scarier and more awful than fiction. Because the “antagonist” in this book is basically white supremacy, it wouldn’t be realistic to quickly and definitively resolve the problem.
I knew from the start that I wanted readers to feel a bit frustrated by the end of it, because that’s how I feel, and how so many BIPOC feel about the fact that white supremacy will probably never be completely gone.
Q: The writer Paul Tremblay said of the novel, “Bat Eater is a compelling, gory, ghostly romp, and it's a righteous battle cry aimed into the racist heart of the pandemic hellscape.” What do you think of that description?
A: I love it! I’m a huge Paul Tremblay fan, so I was honored that he had such kind things to say about my work.
He’s right that it definitely is a gory book—I think gore can be used strategically as a vehicle for discussing dehumanization, which I leaned into in this book.
“Racist heart of the pandemic hellscape” is also a great way to put it. The start of the pandemic really did feel so dystopian and nightmarish. That’s actually how the book begins—likening the early pandemic days when everyone hid in their homes to the end of the world.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’m working on my next YA novel, I’ll Find You Where the Timeline Ends, which is a very lighthearted time travel romance, coming out this November. Talk about whiplash after my horror debut! I think I needed something a bit more lighthearted to focus on after getting emotionally steamrolled by writing about racial trauma.
I’m also working on my next adult horror, which I can’t say much about yet, but I’ve been calling it my “samurai horror book.”
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: I know a lot of people are hesitant to read a book about COVID-19, since we all carry a lot of trauma from that time, and I fully respect that and encourage people to be mindful of their own triggers.
But for anyone on the fence about reading it, I hope it helps to know that I intentionally didn’t use the pandemic for shock value or as a macabre window dressing just to add drama.
This is a story about a group of Asian Americans and their experience being targeted because of the racist rhetoric surrounding the pandemic, which might be a perspective some readers haven’t considered, and which I hope they’re open to hearing.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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