Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (Winterson, Jeanette)

Winterson, J. (1987). Oranges are not the only fruit . Atlantic Monthly Press.Jeanette Winterson was adopted by John and Constance Winterson. Both parents were religious, evangelical Pentecostals who believed that Jeanette was destined to be a missionary. There were no books in the house except the Bible and some religious commentaries. About Oranges are not the only fruit, she said she "uses [herself] as a fictional character. It’s me and it’s not me. It’s early auto-fiction, and it’s a way of experimenting with truth, not to distort it but to distill it."Her mother declared, "This world is full of sin. . . You can change the world." This is a coming-of-age story about a lesbian girl who grows up in a strict religious community. The church leaders "started arguing between themselves about whether I was an unfortunate victim or a wicked person." Winterson said that "when [she] fell in love with another girl. . . I had to make a choice; the choice was to give up the girl or to leave home." So at 16, she left home.Every time I read a narrative about what I perceive as a fundamentalist religious upbringing, I find myself cringing. Lack of access to books except the Bible, the denial of her personhood, the grit she displayed in the face of her circumstance all create a compelling story.

Being a non-Christian, and from a country (India) where Christians are officially minorities, I often find the various flavours in which Christians come to be very, very confusing. What is less confusing is the zealousness of religion that envelopes a fanatic which, if displayed in any other aspect, would ensure you a recommendation to the shrink. Add another side of a person which does not conform to the generally accepted views of the environment to which one belongs, and lo, you have a powder keg with a very short fuse and burning fast.Being different is not as much a problem as the difference being pointed out by other people. For Jeanette (the one in the story, not the author) to be pre-destined by the mother for evangelism and then being sent to a school where she is seen as a freak is bad enough to face during the testing period of adolescence. To realise that what she thinks of as normal in having love for a woman while being a woman is, in reality, an abomination would point towards a catastrophe.Yet, she plods on with her life and emerges a survivor, probably conditioned by her experience as a freak at school and learning from her experience that freaks are normal people too.The tangential references to Arthur and the fairy tales was mildly distracting to begin with but as you identify that those distractions are a dénouement of Jeanette's character as it evolves helps you understand where she is heading.My overall impression of the book is one of how a young girl's naivety protects her from the big bad world and I was left with the warm feeling of seeing a survivor emerge from the chaos both within and without

I read Why Be happy When You Could be Normal first (found it in a library in my apartment building) and then found out about Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, a novel which is based on Winterson's life. I thought that Oranges would fill in the blanks for me. But I found out very little. I found that I was reading a lot of the same autobiographical information that was in the first book I read. Then when I came to Winterson's first same-sex relationship I thought I would find out more than I knew already but not really. There was a little about a subsequent relationship. The vast majority of the book dwells on how the church and her mother affect her negatively. There was abuse. Starving a person for two days is certainly abuse. Her mother is a piece of work. The craziness Winterson's character deals with on a daily basis is mind-boggling. Her mother is beyond eccentric. She is a functioning victim of mental illness. Between the church and the mother, the hypocrisies and ironies abound. Some of it is almost funny. Most is just bizarre. I hate it that the author jumps from the life of the heroine to a fairy tale and back again throughout much of the book. If she is trying to draw parallels, it doesn't work for me. I like books that stay with the story and don't digress. I liked fairy tales as a young girl but not anymore. Basically, Winterston has two books out there with much of the same information in them. No real surprises. I empathize with Winterson. One of the most poignant parts of the book for me was when she went to church with her first girlfriend and was feeling so happy to be with her love in the church that she loved. I think she felt imbued with human and divine love. But the joy wasn't to last.