Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng

In Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng, Zeng is afraid of two things: The supernatural phenomena that increasingly intrude into her daily life, and the unsolved murders of various East Asian women. As the novel progresses, the supernatural horrors intensify as the death toll mounts, creating parallels between supernatural horror and societal violence.

Baker first establishes the parallel between supernatural horror and societal violence when Cora’s sister, Delilah, is killed in a hate crime, leaving Cora psychologically scarred from having witnessed the murder. Delilah’s murderer calling her a “bat eater” as he pushes her to her death underlines the racist hatred behind the crime, creating a scene of horror rooted in real-world prejudice. Later, when she begins to be haunted by a “hungry ghost,” Cora assumes that it is Delilah returning, restless in death. However, Cora is not the only one—Yifei’s experience with the supernatural also echoes aspects of societal violence, as her younger sister, almost drowned to death as a baby for being a girl in China, went on to murder Yifei’s parents and almost killed Yifei, too, in a paranormal encounter. Thus, Baker uses the supernatural as an embodiment of the societal terrors and traumas her characters experience.