Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng by Kylie Lee Baker

A slur on a subway platform, a sister lost, and a ghost that won’t stop knocking—our conversation digs into how Kylie Lee Baker’s Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng turns horror into a blade for truth. We trace Cora Zeng’s journey through pandemic-era New York as she navigates grief, crime scene cleaning, and the sickening rise of anti-Asian hate, asking what happens when other people’s fear tries to decide who you are.

We talk about the hungry ghost as a ferocious metaphor for unresolved grief and denied heritage, and how ritual becomes a language for survival. Along the way, we unpack why undesirable labor so often lands on immigrant communities, how media narratives massage data to minimize patterns of violence, and where slow-burning female rage becomes a form of agency rather than spectacle. The episode probes the politics of naming—how slurs scapegoat, how anglicized names help some vanish in plain sight, and how words shape who is mourned and who is blamed.

If you’re drawn to literary horror, Asian American identity, cultural memory, and the way stories challenge power, this conversation offers a clear, candid look at how genre fiction can outpace think pieces by making trauma visible and undeniable. We close by asking the question the book plants with care: is the monster a person, or a system that decides which lives matter? Press play, then share your take, subscribe for more fearless book talks, and leave a review to help others find the show.

Transcript

Where Literature Meets Controversy

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Lit on Fire, the podcast where literature meets controversy, where banned books, silenced voices, and dangerous ideas refuse to stay quiet. From classrooms to courtrooms, novels to news cycles, we explore how stories challenge power, expose injustice, and ignite social change. So if you're ready to question, to argue, to feel uncomfortable, and to think deeper, you're in the right place.

SPEAKER_01 0:39

I'm Peter Wetzel.

SPEAKER_00 0:40

And I'm Elizabeth Hahn.

Introducing Bat Eater And Its Stakes

SPEAKER_01 0:41

And this is lit on fire. Welcome back. Today we're diving into Bat Eater and other names for Korazang, a blistering, genre-bending novel by Kylie Lee Baker, that confronts racism, misogyny, cultural erasure, and the monstrous ways society chooses its scapegoats. This is a book that refuses to be gentle. It blends horror with social realism, fury with vulnerability, and personal trauma with collective history. At its core, the novel asks, Who gets to define you? What happens when a woman's body becomes a battleground for cultural fear, political rhetoric, and inherited shame? And how does survival look when the violence you face is both systemic and intimate? Through Korang Zang's story, we encounter questions about Asian American identity, gender violence, xenophobia, mental health, and the deep exhaustion of constantly being misread, mislabeled, and misunderstood. We'll be talking about how horror functions as a metaphor, how female rage becomes a form of resistance, and how naming, who names you, and what they call you can either erase or empower. So light a candle, brew some tea, and put an offering out for the spirits and join us as we explore how Bat Eater and other names for Korazang uses darkness not just to frighten us, but to expose the truth we often try hardest to avoid. So Liz, what's your take?

SPEAKER_00 2:09

I loved this book. I'm surprised that I love this book as much as I did. I really don't have the words to say how much I loved it. I recommended it to a couple friends immediately. And I wanted to tell you that I went to the local bookstore looking for this book, and I live in a small town, so we have this local bookstore I like to support, and they have a lot of the main titles. But I walked in and the owner knows that I'm the English department chair at my high school. And I asked her if she had the book, and she looked at me first like I'd sprouted horns because she'd never heard of it before. And she's like, What is that? And so she started looking it up, and then she looked at me and she said, Now, you're sure you want to read this book? And I'm like, Yeah. And she said, You know it's horror, right? And I'm like, Yes, I do. But it's so much more than that. But just before I say the things I liked about it, let me just say that literature is all-encompassing for me. I teach the classics, but one thing I hear people say sometimes is, well, I don't really read because I just read this. I read these modern books, I read these fancy books. No, that's reading. And it's important because we're getting modern takes and we're still absorbing and learning that empathy and everything else that I think makes literature so important. But Kylie Lee Baker takes horror and turns it into a beautiful metaphor. There are the classic horror tropes and things that you will like, but then she has this great character development, these great relationships, and a wealth of insight, and then just the right amount of humor. So that I was just going, I listened to this book between yesterday and this morning. So I just finished it and I loved it. I could just listen to it all over again. What about you?

Plot Setup And Pandemic Context

SPEAKER_01 3:51

I loved it too, yeah. And it's interesting that she would have that perspective and that questioning look when you asked for this book, as if horror couldn't have anything meaningful to say. And from my perspective, anytime a creative makes something, it is naturally imbued with some meaning, no matter how deep or shallow. And it is also naturally political in some way. Right. As well, which that's definitely an aspect of this book. I've had a pleasure this last year of delving into a number of authors expressing their culture through either horror or fantasy, such as S.A. Chacoborty or Tara Sim or P. Jelly Clark, Stephen Graham Jones, Erica T. Wirth, to name a few that are worth checking out, and Kylie Lee Baker, among them being a Chinese, Japanese, Irish heritage-born American who obviously expresses not only her Chinese heritage in this, but also maybe a struggle to reconcile with her Chinese culture and her American upbringing and her identity in that regard. Because I think that plays very much into this work that she did. And I thought it was really profound. I remember just having so many questions and things that I wanted to discuss, and I knew it was going to be a book that we were going to really be able to dive into.

SPEAKER_00 5:03

Right. So I think the first thing we need to do is just set up the basic plot that we're dealing with. Our main character is Kora Zhang. This is during 2020, right smack dab in the middle of the COVID pandemic in New York City. Right at the beginning, Cora's sister is killed by someone who calls her a bat eater and throws her in front of a subway. It's horrifically brutal. And from that point, Cora struggles to recover from that trauma and tries to find her place. She ends up doing a job as a crime scene cleaner with a couple of friends who are also Asian. And they work to cover these horrific, brutal scenes. They come in after the police have taken pictures and collected all the evidence they need and removed the bodies, but then they're left with the aftermath of whatever crime it is and have to clean the location. And during this time, they start going to these jobs and noticing that one after another, each of these victims is an Asian female. And then at these jobs, they also notice that there are always bats involved somehow. And they begin to suspect a serial killer, and we kind of move on from there. So I have this burning question, and it just bothered me through the entire thing as I was trying to come up with my thoughts on it. And that is that Cora is so traumatized by her sister's death. I mean, that is a bloody scene. And then she goes and she becomes a crime scene cleaner, and she's seeing bloody terrible scene after bloody terrible scene. Why?

SPEAKER_01 6:40

Yeah, that was the very first thing that I started to question about this book. Because I would at first I was like, okay, that seems a little unbelievable. Is this just a contrivance of the author to get her to come across these brutal murders? But it sort of happens by accident because really she works for a dry cleaner company who takes on these odd jobs. And we already know that she is kind of OCD and germophobic. And so it's in her nature to be already in the cleaning industry. And I really felt like apart from being a convenient way for them to come across these apparent murders, it also really signified how a lot of times the jobs that white people don't want, the dirtiest jobs, the most undesirable jobs, go to immigrants and minorities.

SPEAKER_00 7:25

And she's a art history major or something like that, correct? She has struggled to find a way to use her degree. And certainly during COVID, so many things have shut down that she lost the job that had to do with her degree. And then she mentions to her sister before she dies, I might clean for a living. And that seems to be just the first thought that comes to her because perhaps she knows a lot of Asian people that are cleaning. That rings with me now, what you're saying, as far as the minority jobs are concerned.

SPEAKER_01 7:54

And because she's already aware that there's an uptick in anti-Asian racism, her options are limited pretty much to her community.

Work, Class, And Who Cleans The Blood

SPEAKER_00 8:02

Right. So she's falling into something with which she can be comfortable. So one of the things I want to talk about is female rage, resistance, how that plays into this novel. But really, our main character is a very strange vehicle for that because she is so afraid and so timid and so without a voice or identity. What I really love about this book is that we see a really wonderful story arc with her where we build, build, build because she's constantly in this state of fear. And then we hit a climactic point, and then she is markedly changed at the end of the novel. And one thing we have to identify about her is that she really doesn't know where she belongs because while she has a Chinese dad who is back in China, she had a white mom who didn't want to raise her after she was born, and she ends up with her white aunt, who is also Catholic, and trying to make her go to the Catholic Church all the time. She really just doesn't know where she fits in. And that plays in with her sister because you think that her sister's the one with the personality, but she's killed right off the bat, and then you're left with this shell of a person who now has to become our heroine. I don't know. What were your thoughts as you were reading her as a character and her situation?

SPEAKER_01 9:21

Well, yeah, like you said, she is so afraid in the very beginning. You know, she's got the germophobia, she's got the OCD, she's kind of afraid of being alone, she's afraid of putting herself out there and really pursuing her dreams.

SPEAKER_00 9:32

She has no friends.

SPEAKER_01 9:33

She has no friends. She just makes excuses after excuse after excuse to be kind of codependent upon her sister. And it's very clear that that has strained in the very brief little dialogue we get from them, that has strained their relationship. And then her sister is killed, and she is quite literally out to drift in the world all alone. It forces her to have to find herself. But she struggles.

SPEAKER_00 9:55

She struggles a lot.

SPEAKER_01 9:56

Because she fits in nowhere, really, because of being part white and part Chinese, also being isolated by her Catholic aunts from her culture because it isn't Christian. So she really doesn't have any connection to her Chinese heritage or even a connection to the other persons that she works with, because they have more of a connection to their Chinese heritage than she does.

SPEAKER_00 10:17

It gets a little frustrating, but I want everyone to know as you're reading this book, she's still struggling when you've only got like an hour and a half left. If you're listening to the Audible, I mean, she is still struggling. And then she comes to a place where her hand is forced and she's either going to develop as a character and figure out what she's doing, or she's gonna just die. I mean, that's really where you get at that point in the book. And I just thought that was so fascinating because I think it really shows how someone without a clear cultural heritage, but clearly of a different culture, is set adrift in that situation. She has lived up to this point following everything her sister Delilah did. She hangs out with Delilah's friends. She makes decisions based on her sister. If Delilah wants to do it, then she does it. And that's the only way she knows how to exist. And that rug is literally pulled out from underneath her. And I just want to say that I actually love that she struggles the way she does. That sounds awful. But as a character, I find her so much more believable. When we are traumatized, when we are left without a foundation to build on, it does take you forever to get a new point in your life to actually develop any kind of momentum forward. That is a very believable aspect of this character. Korra does eventually find her rage, but for the other 90% of the book, where Korra is still struggling, female rage and resistance really comes in the form of this quote, hungry ghost.

Fear, Timidity, And A Slow-Build Arc

SPEAKER_01 11:47

Right. So her aunt, who does follow Chinese traditions, warns her that we're entering the season of hungry ghosts, and in order to appease the spirit of your sister, you need to put out food for her and give her the proper honor that she deserves. But of course, Cora has been taught by her aunt to kind of dismiss all that Chinese superstition. She doesn't do it, and she begins to see these dark apparitions that eventually confront her in her apartment as this woman who is a ghost, and she sees a jade bracelet on her, and she believes it's her sister, Delilah, who is who's kind of come to haunt her.

SPEAKER_00 12:26

Right. And it's really creepy. Oh, it's terrifying. It is terrifying. That's where the horror in this really comes into play because the first time she sees this ghost, the ghost is clearly unhappy. The ghost looks terrifying, and then the ghost wants to eat. And your first question is, what does it want to eat? It is creeping toward her. And I literally, I had dreams last night about serial killers. I just want you to know that. Serial killers and ghosts. I was really terrified, but that's where the anger comes into play.

SPEAKER_01 13:00

Yeah, and I think it's very significant that her initial reaction to this is not to figure out why this is happening, not to think, what does this ghost want from me, but to try to figure out how to get rid of it and to stop it from showing up and to just get it out of my life. It's an avoidance tactic, which is very much on par with with her personality.

SPEAKER_00 13:17

I have to say it would be my reaction too. How do I make it go away? Because I yeah, I wouldn't be able to sleep with any lights off at that point for the rest of my life. And that's kind of what happens to her. She sleeps with the lights off. She does.

SPEAKER_01 13:29

She starts sleeping lights on so that it won't show up. But I think that's really significant because I think it symbolizes sort of this aspect of her identity that she is refusing to accept. And that is her Chinese heritage and owning up to her Chinese ancestry and culture. And so she's avoiding that, and it's not gonna let her it's not gonna let her get away with it.

SPEAKER_00 13:49

No, it's not gonna let her avoid it. And so there is inherent anger. Cora feels like the anger is directed at her because she didn't properly mourn her sister and do the things her aunt said, but she has to come to realize why the ghost is, quote, hungry, which I encourage you to look that up because it is a whole tradition that's going on. But why the ghost is hungry and what she actually needs to do. And there's a lot of guessing that comes into play, and that's how she brings in her two friends that clean the crime scenes with her, is because they know more about her Chinese heritage than she does.

SPEAKER_01 14:24

Yeah, at first she thinks they're gonna think I'm absolutely crazy, but when she tells them, both of them are like, Yeah, we've seen hungry ghosts as well.

SPEAKER_00 14:31

Right. And that's incredibly validating. But the other thing to know is that after her sister's demise, she spent some time in a mental institution because she just couldn't handle it. And she is put away and now even has on her record that she's not allowed to own a gun because she's quote mentally unstable. And so she fears all the time that people are not going to believe her and not going to trust her, and she has this persistent fear of being put away. That also explains why when she sees the ghost, she's like, Oh, I need to make this end, because if I tell anyone this, I'm going right back in the padded ring.

SPEAKER_01 15:07

And so I think this is where we get into the kind of assumption that the bookseller made is what possible meaning could you get from a horror novel?

SPEAKER_00 15:17

So much.

SPEAKER_01 15:18

Yes, and the significance of using this ghost as a symbol of suppressed cultural identity really works.

SPEAKER_00 15:24

It does. And it makes it so tangible. The horror vehicle is perfect for that. Because instead of going into a realistic novel on racism, which will be so in your face and might turn some people off, unfortunately, we have this vehicle of fictional realism, this fantasy that's woven in, and this horror. And for me, what that horror does is give me a visualization of the trauma and the emotion. And that leads me to invest in this character and also understand on a deep level what she's going through and how much she has repressed in the process.

SPEAKER_01 16:06

We're more receptive to symbolic metaphor than we are, just like you said, in your face.

SPEAKER_00 16:13

Discussion and dialogue and opinion. And this is a book where if we were applying critical lenses, this is where we'd apply the dreaded critical race theory, right? Because that is a lens through which we view things. But that's why people get turned off when they overtly see discussions of racism. So here is this horror novel, which probably does a better job than any of that in communicating this isolation, this lack of cultural identity, this erasure that's taken place with Cora and with the entire Chinese community in New York during COVID. We understand that on a much deeper level.

SPEAKER_01 16:48

This book does deal overtly with racism. It does. Obviously, the man who called her sister a bat eater and pushed her in front of the train was doing so because of post-COVID anti-Asian racism.

SPEAKER_00 17:00

It was a hate crime.

SPEAKER_01 17:01

We know that statistically speaking, before 2020, the average anti-Asian hate crime was eight persons per year per area. And it it soared post-COVID to about 85 persons per year per area. So undeniably, undeniably, racism became something that was front and center within the Asian community because of COVID. And it plays a big part in this book. But this symbolic struggle with the horror element is very much more personal to the main character, Cora.

SPEAKER_00 17:32

Yes, and that's what I like. It is so worth noting also that we have so many racial discussions, even amongst those of us that want to talk about it, that focus in so many areas. But I feel like during COVID, the Asian experience was not fully seen during that time by those of us outside of the community. Yes, I was offended when I heard people call it the China virus. I was offended and I knew that was wrong. But really knowing the amount of crime and the amount of hate that was directed at the Asian community, when we live in an area where that's not a huge part of our population, it's just abhorrent.

SPEAKER_01 18:13

Yes, and I I think it's fair to say that there was an active effort to downplay what was really going on at that time.

SPEAKER_00 18:19

There was.

SPEAKER_01 18:20

And that comes into play here in the book as well, as they attempt to bring attention to the growing number of Asian victims. There is an active effort to suppress the numbers and to downplay the significance of what they see as, like we said earlier, a possible serial killer.

Hungry Ghosts And Cultural Denial

SPEAKER_00 18:38

And I think that this comes into the idea of the naming as well. So we have racial slurs directed at Chinese people in this book. Bat Eater is, of course, in the title. The whole community is diminished to be a scapegoat for COVID. We always need someone to blame. And so we are notorious as a human race in picking a group of people to make a scapegoat for whatever bad thing is happening. It's how people are so manipulated politically, is someone can tell you, no, it's these people over here that are creating your problem. So during COVID, the scapegoat marginalized group were the Asian Americans. So when you are made a scapegoat, there's a desire to recede into the background to make yourself an invisible, as much as people are also trying to make you invisible. And one of the things I notice is that, of course, all of our main Asian characters with this Chinese heritage all have very Americanized names. And I see that even in the classroom. I've had students come into my classroom before, and several of them have been Asian. I see their full name as it would appear on their birth certificate, and I ask them how to pronounce it, and they say, just call me Ruth. Right. Or something like that, because they realize no one's really going to want to pronounce my name. And in order to have friends and fit in socially, I'm just going to make it easy on everyone. And this is the American or the white name that I've chosen. And so there is this feeling of that, the taking the job within the community, but also having a name that can help you blend in. And then, of course, we have the character that has no name really.

SPEAKER_01 20:24

The characters we're talking about here, of course, Cora, Harvey, Delilah. And then you got the character that has no name, Ife, who took her name from a celebrity, a movie star, right?

SPEAKER_00 20:36

Right.

SPEAKER_01 20:37

Because she was the unsanctioned female child of a Chinese couple during the one child rule. Correct. And so they did not name her.

SPEAKER_00 20:45

She kind of She grew up being called girl. Girl come here, girl go do that, because they were not going to name her. They didn't want to acknowledge her because then they could be penalized in some way for having this extra child. So I guess good they didn't kill her, but they certainly made her feel like she was dead or invisible.

SPEAKER_01 21:06

I think there's a very recurring thing about how the way we name things, like you said, is power. It either erases or makes you visible. It either gives you power or attempts to take it away in some way. For example, when you were talking about the scapegoat, of course, yeah, we've got to name the villain, who's the enemy. We want to name that person so we can direct our hate to a certain to a certain group or person, right?

SPEAKER_00 21:26

Right. And then we're going to culturally name them. Like this is this other group over here.

SPEAKER_01 21:31

Yes. But when they try to bring the details of the murders to the attention and point out that these are all Asian persons, then the naming is suppressed because that makes a victim of the enemy. That's going to provide some sympathy for the enemy. And so it's inconvenient. So it's the way the media uses the way we name things to form social opinion.

SPEAKER_00 21:56

I mean, it's the same as taking a whole group of middle Eastern people and saying the terrorists.

SPEAKER_01 22:02

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 22:03

Right? Because now if you constantly label people in Gaza right now as terrorists, then you don't have to see them as people. Because then them dying and people trying to say, look at these families living in these tents. No, no, no, no, no. We don't want that coverage because then we might be forced to have empathy or sympathy with the people that are in that country.

SPEAKER_01 22:25

Or making sure that we call immigrants illegals.

Metaphor Over Message

SPEAKER_00 22:27

Labeling illegal instead of just calling them immigrants or any of the things that would be relevant. The illegals are doing this. And so we have to deport the illegals. And that names them in just the right way to make it okay to get rid of them. This really plays into being both invisible and hyper-visible. Invisible as a victim, hyper-visible as a perpetrator, as someone who's spreading the plague, and as someone who's taking away from the culture around them. That tension is distinctly there. And I noticed two different things. Clearly, we have these girls that are dying as they go to crime scene after crime scene. We have these Asian girls dying. But one of the things that's more profound to me and maybe more disturbing to me at certain parts of the book is how Cora is ignored. She at one point runs up to a Taco Bell and she has clearly been injured in some way and has blood on her. And all the other people in the parking lot ignore her. Like no one offers to help her. No one comes over and says, Are you okay? She is able to sit out on this seat outside with blood on her shirt, actually splashed on half of her body, and there's not a single person that's doing anything. They just turn their head and pretend she's not there. In fact, she notes that someone deliberately turns their head in the other direction. So there is just a malevolence for me, obviously in directly targeting someone, but also simply pretending like someone doesn't exist is perhaps more heinous because it's a crime committed by the people who quote unquote aren't bad.

SPEAKER_01 24:07

Yeah, and it's so much easier to do that when we have a sense of the other.

SPEAKER_00 24:12

Right.

SPEAKER_01 24:12

Right? If that had been a white woman in distress, there would have been much more of a reaction. Correct. She probably would have gotten the help.

SPEAKER_00 24:18

Yes, she would have.

SPEAKER_01 24:19

But because she comes there in the form of the other, that's not their problem.

SPEAKER_00 24:24

So in the end, you're left with the question like, what are the crimes and who is the monster? How do we define monstrous in this story? And for me, it's not about coming down to a single serial killer and trying to solve the crime. It's about seeing through the course of this book that the racism and the systemic infrastructure that is stacked against them is where the real monster is for me. That is just painful because again, we go back to that conversation that we've had before about what do you do? Can you change it or do you burn it down? And there's a lot there about what is monstrous. She thinks she's ultimately going to find a serial killer, her and her friends do. Like we're going to reveal what's going on and then they're going to track down the serial killer. That's not the point.

SPEAKER_01 25:15

No.

SPEAKER_00 25:16

The villain is not the serial killer.

SPEAKER_01 25:18

It's the pervasive attitude.

SPEAKER_00 25:19

Yes, in the way that you see it, it is the pervasive racism. It's the systemic racism. It's the attitude that white men in particular have toward Asian women. And if we're honest about it, the monstrous thing is also simply how Asian women are stereotyped for white men. Hypersexualized, silent, submissive, an object for white men.

SPEAKER_01 25:46

So once again, I am struck by the fact that we are discussing a book that very clearly portrays how easy it is for the most vulnerable groups in our society, particularly minorities and women, to become the victims and how the media and politicians leverage language and naming and narrative to sway public's opinion against those groups of people and justify and incite violence towards them. And this happens, of course, all around the world, even when white people are the minority. I mean, it's just a common tactic to use when you are attempting to justify a dehumanization of a whole group of people, right?

SPEAKER_00 26:35

Right.

SPEAKER_01 26:35

And that's why I think it's so important that stories like this exist, because they hold a mirror up to that tactic. And I think it's significant that we keep coming across to it over and over again in these stories. And it's particularly significant with what's going on today in the world. So I think we need to keep discussing these stories, and people need to keep writing these stories and revealing that false narrative of the other, the enemy, the scapegoat.

SPEAKER_00 26:59

And as we talk about this, I think it's important for us to note always that we are definitely speaking from a perspective outside of this experience and seeing what we see. Forgive us if at any point we're speaking on things that you feel step into that space too much. But for me, this book just really opened my eyes to this experience in a way that I had not thought about it before. So I'm a little revved up because this is now so blatantly in front of me. And not that it hasn't been in other ways, but this just really opened my eyes to the experience of this culture.

SPEAKER_01 27:33

Yeah. And I think we received it from somebody who does have the right to speak on it.

SPEAKER_00 27:36

Yes, they did.

SPEAKER_01 27:38

So, Liz, why don't you tell us what we'll be discussing next time?

SPEAKER_00 27:42

Well, for once, we're going to be discussing a book that I've read and that you're reading, and that is The Inheritance of Orchidea Divina by Soraida Cordova. And it is a great piece of magical realism near and near to my heart. I absolutely love it, and I'm excited to discuss it with you. So, until then, keep reading, keep thinking, and we'll look forward to talking to you soon.