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

Hungry Ghosts and Chinese Spiritual Traditions in Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng

In Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng, Kylie Lee Baker weaves Chinese spiritual traditions—particularly the Hungry Ghost Festival, joss paper offerings, and ghost-month rituals—into the fabric of a story about grief, racial violence, and ancestral neglect. The novel argues that hungry ghosts are not merely supernatural creatures but metaphors for the forgotten dead: Asian women whose lives were taken by racist violence and whose deaths go unacknowledged. These spirits cannot find peace because the living have failed to honor them, and their hunger mirrors the unfulfilled obligations of a society that looks away. The thematic claim is that spiritual traditions offer both a language for mourning and a path toward reparation, but only when the living are willing to see, feed, and finally release the dead.

The Thematic Framework: Hungry Ghosts as Neglected Ancestors

In Chinese folk religion, a hungry ghost (egui) is a spirit whose existence is defined by insatiable craving—often depicted with a needle-thin throat and a bloated belly, unable to keep down food. These are souls who died violently, were improperly buried, or receive no offerings from descendants. The Ghost Month (the seventh lunar month) is when the boundary between worlds thins; families burn joss paper and leave food to appease these wandering spirits.

Baker maps this cosmology onto contemporary New York City. The novel’s hungry ghosts are almost exclusively women of Asian descent who have been murdered—by white supremacist violence, by a serial killer, or by a society that deems them disposable. Their hunger is literal (they devour food, flesh, and fire) but also symbolic: they hunger for recognition, for justice, for the rituals that would let them move on. Cora Zeng, the protagonist, begins the story as someone who has rejected these traditions—she burns no joss paper for her half-sister Delilah after Delilah is pushed onto subway tracks by a white assailant who calls them “bat eater.” The novel traces Cora’s arc from denial to reluctant acceptance to active participation in the spiritual work of feeding the dead.

Tracing the Theme Across the Plot

Phase One: Denial and the Refusal to Feed (Chapters Two through Ten)

Cora’s initial response to Delilah’s death is avoidance. She does not attend the funeral properly, does not burn joss paper, does not pray. When Yifei Liu, her coworker at a crime-scene cleaning company, first tells Cora about hungry ghosts—and shows Cora a scar on her ribs that she claims came from one—Cora responds with skepticism. The evidence from Chapter Seven reveals Cora’s internal resistance:

She reminds herself that a living, breathing human could just as easily have given her the scar, that ghosts are not real just because Yifei Liu the kleptomaniac crime scene cleaner says so.

Cora’s denial is a form of self-protection. To believe in hungry ghosts would mean acknowledging that Delilah is suffering, that Cora has failed her, and that the universe is not orderly but haunted. Yet the supernatural pushes in anyway. Floaters in Cora’s vision, shadows that move independently, food that disappears from her fridge—these phenomena accumulate until she can no longer ignore them.

The turning point comes in Chapter Ten, when a creature with a needle-thin throat appears in Cora’s kitchen. The evidence describes the scene in detail:

A jade bracelet swings slowly back and forth on its wrist, rattling against the bones. A gold plate glimmers on the bottom, but Cora cannot read it.

Cora recognizes the bracelet—it was her sister’s. When she turns the gold plate, she reads the Chinese character for hope. This is undeniably Delilah, transformed into a hungry ghost. Cora feeds her an orange, and the creature devours it “peel and all,” making “a keening sound as if in pain.” Cora finally understands: “She didn’t burn joss paper, she didn’t pray for her. She never even went to her grave after the funeral.”

This scene establishes the core spiritual logic of the novel: neglect creates hunger, and hunger creates suffering that transcends death. The jade bracelet—a symbol of hope and of family connection—becomes the link between Cora’s denial and her responsibility.

Phase Two: Engagement and the Gathering of Tools (Chapters Fifteen through Eighteen)

Once Cora accepts that Delilah is a hungry ghost, she must decide how to respond. She turns to Harvey Chen, a coworker who offers a pop-culture-informed approach based on Hong Kong vampire movies. Harvey’s research into jiangshi (hopping corpses) gives Cora a set of provisional tools: peachwood staffs, mirrors, coins, and rice. The evidence from Chapter Fifteen shows their midnight experiment in Foley Square, where Cora tries to arm herself against the supernatural with objects from Chinese folklore.

At the same time, Yifei offers a more traditional, ritual-based approach. She plans a feast for the fifteenth night of Ghost Month—a meal meant to summon and appease the hungry dead. The evidence from Chapter Eighteen describes Cora, Yifei, and Harvey preparing the dinner, and the chaos that ensues when two white neighbors, Ryan and Paisley, show up uninvited and eat the offering. When Delilah arrives as a summoned ghost, she devours Ryan and Paisley with terrifying speed:

Delilah’s jaw drops open with a crack, and she leans forward and closes her mouth around Ryan’s head.

This is a violent rupture of the ritual’s intended purpose. The feast was supposed to placate the ghost, not feed it human flesh. The scene dramatizes the danger of incomplete or corrupted traditions: when proper offerings are not made (when interlopers consume what is meant for the dead), the hungry ghost’s hunger becomes lethal.

Yifei’s scar—the teeth marks from a hungry ghost that attacked her when she was a child—adds another layer. She tells Cora, “I know Americans don’t like to think about this kind of thing. Frankly, I didn’t really care much about it when I was a kid. But the thing about hungry ghosts is they don’t care if you believe in them.” Yifei represents a generation that was raised with these beliefs but had to distance herself from them for survival. Her scar is proof that the tradition is not just folklore; it is lived experience.

Phase Three: Reclamation and Apocalypse (Chapters Twenty-Three through Twenty-Five)

The climax of the theme occurs in the final chapters, when Cora stops trying to appease the hungry ghosts through small rituals and instead embraces a larger, more destructive act: she burns down the mayor’s residence at Gracie Mansion. The evidence from Chapter Twenty-Four is explicit about her motivation:

Cora remembers Auntie Zeng’s joss paper house burning, how the dead had grabbed at it. But it wasn’t enough. These ghosts are starving, with no one left to feed them. No one but Cora. And she has something even better than joss paper to give them.

She pours propane across the porch, then strikes a match. The fire is an offering—a grand, cathartic gift to the hundreds of murdered Asian women who have been following her through the subway tunnels. The evidence describes the moment:

“It’s for you,” she says to them, then again in Chinese, just in case. Because Cora understands now that they can only take what is given to them.

The fire is simultaneously destructive and sacred. It destroys property (the mayor’s house, a symbol of the institutional failure to protect Asian women) but it also feeds the dead. Cora prays “for the first time in her life” and means it: “She prays that this is enough. That this will placate the suffering dead.”

The novel ends on the last night of Ghost Month, when Auntie Zeng takes Cora to the East River to release paper lanterns. The evidence describes this ritual:

“We need to guide them home,” she says, handing one to Cora, striking a match, and lighting the tea candle inside.

Cora sets the lantern on the water, and it floats “toward a distant, undetermined destination.” This is the completion of the spiritual arc. Cora has moved from denial (no offerings) to flawed engagement (the failed feast) to destructive reparation (the fire) to a final, peaceful ritual of release. The lanterns guide the hungry ghosts home.

Character and Symbol Connections

The theme of hungry ghosts binds together nearly every major character and symbol in the novel.

  • Cora Zeng begins as a secular, skeptical young woman who has cut herself off from her cultural heritage. Her arc is a return to tradition—not as a passive believer, but as an active agent who reclaims ritual on her own terms. By the end, she builds an altar with Auntie Zeng and offers oranges to the dead, reclaiming agency over fear.

  • Delilah Zeng is the central hungry ghost of the novel. Her transformation from vibrant sister to starving specter is the engine of the plot. After death, she cannot speak, cannot be reasoned with—she can only consume. This reflects how Cora’s neglect (and society’s violence) has reduced Delilah to a cipher of suffering. The jade bracelet that Delilah wears in death was a symbol of hope in life; now it is a marker of what was lost.

  • Yifei Liu is the spiritual guide who validates the tradition through lived experience. Her scar from a hungry ghost attack makes her an authority. She is also the most practical of the trio, insisting on proper ritual procedures—but she cannot control the outcome when the ritual is disrupted. Her character embodies the difficulty of maintaining tradition in a hostile, secular world.

  • Harvey Chen provides a comic but earnest counterpoint. His knowledge comes from movies and Wikipedia, not family practice. Yet his willingness to try anything—peachwood, rice, coins—shows that tradition can be adaptable. His death (his body found days later, unclaimed) mirrors the fate of the hungry ghosts themselves: forgotten, unmourned.

  • Auntie Zeng represents the elder generation who keeps the traditions alive. She gives Cora the jade necklace for protection, builds joss paper houses, and leads the final lantern ritual. Her role is to anchor Cora in the continuity of practice.

  • Joss paper is the primary offering to the dead throughout the novel. Cora burns it, but finds it insufficient. The shift from joss paper to propane fire is a commentary on scale: the violence done to Asian women is so vast that paper offerings cannot satisfy the hunger.

  • Oranges appear at two key moments: Cora feeds one to Delilah in the kitchen, and at the novel’s end, she offers half an orange to a ghostly hand in the dark and eats the other half herself. The orange is a symbol of shared sustenance—a small, tangible connection between the living and the dead.

  • The bat is a repulsive object (found in drains, associated with the slur “bat eater”) that also becomes a kind of totem for the violence done to Asian women. It is not directly a spiritual symbol, but it triggers the traumatic memories that lead Cora back to the hungry ghosts.

Complexity and Contradiction

The novel does not present Chinese spiritual traditions as an uncomplicated solution. Several layers of complexity emerge:

The problem of insufficient ritual. Joss paper burning and food offerings are not enough to satisfy the hunger of these ghosts. The violence that created them is systemic and ongoing. Cora’s act of arson is an escalation that breaks the rules but also, paradoxically, honors the dead more fully than any prescribed ritual could.

The danger of rigid belief. Harvey’s pop-culture approach fails because it treats folklore as a checklist rather than a living practice. The feast fails because it is interrupted by outsiders who do not respect the ritual. Tradition requires intention, context, and community—not just correct actions.

The question of agency. The hungry ghosts can only take what is given to them. This is both a limitation and a call to action. The dead cannot save themselves; the living must choose to see them and feed them. But giving is not passive—it requires Cora to risk herself, to burn down a building, to face her own trauma.

The secular dissonance. Cora, Yifei, and Harvey are all Chinese American/Chinese diaspora characters who have complicated relationships to their heritage. They do not simply “believe” in hungry ghosts; they struggle with skepticism, embarrassment, and cultural distance. The novel honors this struggle while ultimately affirming that the traditions hold truth.

The ending’s ambiguity. The final lantern ritual suggests peace, but the novel also ends with Cora eating half an orange in the dark—still in a liminal space between the living and the dead. The ghosts may have been guided home, but the conditions that created them (racism, violence, neglect) remain. The thematic resolution is emotional and spiritual, not political or structural.

Study Questions and Answers

1. How does the orange function as both a literal offering and a symbolic act in Cora’s relationship with Delilah’s ghost?

The orange first appears in Chapter Ten, when Cora feeds a whole orange to the hungry ghost that is Delilah. The creature devours it “peel and all,” juice dripping to the floor, making a keening sound. This is Cora’s first act of feeding the dead—a direct response to her earlier failure to burn joss paper or visit the grave. At the novel’s end, Cora again offers half an orange to a ghostly hand and eats the other half herself. This symmetrical gesture shows her progression from fearful offering to shared communion: she now participates in the ritual rather than simply performing it. The orange symbolizes the small, tangible connections that the living can maintain with the dead, and the act of eating together (even across the boundary of death) restores a kind of kinship.

2. Why does Cora burn down Gracie Mansion, and how does this act relate to the tradition of joss paper offerings?

Cora sets fire to the mayor’s residence after realizing that joss paper is not enough. The evidence states: “These ghosts are starving, with no one left to feed them. No one but Cora. And she has something even better than joss paper to give them.” The fire is an offering of massive scale—a ritual act that destroys a symbol of institutional power while feeding the dead. In Chinese tradition, joss paper is burned to send material goods to the spirit world. Cora extends this logic: if paper houses are not enough, perhaps a real house will be. The fire also serves as a public act of defiance, reclaiming the slur “bat eater” and asserting that the dead have a claim on the living world. It is a corrupted but sincere ritual—a hybrid of tradition and desperation.

3. In Chapter Seven, Yifei shows Cora a scar that she claims came from a hungry ghost. What does this scar reveal about the novel’s treatment of belief and trauma?

The scar is a physical mark of an intangible experience. Yifei tells Cora that the ghost attacked her when she was a child, and she lifts her shirt to reveal “a purple scar across the whispers of Yifei’s ribs, just below her bra… a deep crater… glossy with scar tissue.” Cora touches it and feels only “gnarled flesh, a rough porridge.” The scar functions as proof that cannot be independently verified—Cora can believe Yifei or not. But the scar also symbolizes how trauma literally marks the body. Yifei’s willingness to show it is an act of trust and witness. The novel suggests that spiritual beliefs do not require scientific evidence; they require community testimony. The scar bridges the gap between skepticism and faith, grounding the supernatural in physical reality.

4. Compare Harvey’s approach to dealing with hungry ghosts (using peachwood, rice, coins, and mirrors from Hong Kong vampire movies) with Yifei’s approach (preparing a feast on the fifteenth night of Ghost Month). What does each approach reveal about the characters?

Harvey’s approach is eclectic, intellectual, and detached from lived tradition. He researches jiangshi folklore online, gathers household objects, and treats the problem like a puzzle. His methods are playful but ultimately insufficient—they are tools of defense, not offerings. Yifei’s approach is communal, ritualistic, and rooted in family practice. She cooks a full dinner, lights candles, and follows the calendar of Ghost Month. However, both approaches fail in different ways: Harvey’s experiments produce no results, and Yifei’s feast is disrupted by outsiders who eat the offering, leading to two deaths. Harvey represents a secular, diasporic relationship to culture (the desire to reclaim tradition through research), while Yifei represents a more direct inheritance. Neither is fully adequate, but together they point toward the need for intention, respect, and community.

5. The novel ends with Cora releasing a paper lantern on the East River on the last night of Ghost Month. What does this ritual accomplish, and what remains unresolved?

The lantern ritual is meant to “guide them home”—to lead the hungry ghosts out of the world of the living and back to the spirit realm. Cora lights the candle inside the paper lotus and sets it on the water, where it floats toward a “distant, undetermined destination.” This act provides closure for Cora: she has finally performed the ritual that she failed to do for Delilah. The fire at Gracie Mansion fed the ghosts; the lantern guides them away. Yet the novel does not suggest that the underlying violence has ended. The epilogue (Chapter Twenty-Five) takes place one year later, in April 2021. A mass shooting at an Atlanta spa targets Asian women. The COVID-19 pandemic continues. Cora gets her first vaccine dose and “begins to find small pleasures,” but the systemic conditions that created hungry ghosts remain. The ritual offers spiritual peace for the dead and emotional healing for the living, but it does not solve racism, violence, or neglect. The lantern’s “undetermined destination” reflects an uncertain future: the dead may be home, but the living are still on the journey.