Juxtaposing a girl’s coming-of-age story with biblical allusions and dreamlike new myths, Jeanette Winterson’s Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit tells the semi-autobiographical story of a gal raised by Pentecostal evangelists who slowly discovers her own beliefs and lesbian desires — and gets kicked out of her church and home pretty fast.

Odd thing is, in the end, Jeanette comes back to town to visit her religion-crazed mother. Oranges is in large part a story of family, forgiveness, and redemption — these terms defined very differently, of course, from Jeanette’s original upbringing.

re-reading a classic

I had to read this for my British history class, but it’s worth reading anyway.