Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

Content Warning: This section discusses anti-LGBTQIA+ bias and abuse.

Winterson was born in Manchester, England in 1959 and is best known for her debut novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. She is often credited with the ability to combine and weave multiple genres of writing and storytelling together to write creative and original works, whether they be memoir-style or historical fiction. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is her first novel, and it acts as a semi-autobiographical memoir: “She was adopted and brought up in Accrington, Lancashire, in the north of England. Her strict Pentecostal Evangelist upbringing provides the background to her acclaimed first novel” (“Jeanette Winterson.” British Council). Jeanette uses elements of her own life in her fiction and uses her experiences growing up in a religious community unaccepting of her lesbian identity to craft the narrative of her fictional counterpart, Jeanette. The uniqueness of Winterson’s works lies in the “formal indeterminacy and genre-bending of her individual works” (“Jeanette Winterson.” British Council). It is Winterson’s tendency to use multiple genres to craft a story that make them so individually creative. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is not only a great example of how she does so but is also her first attempt at using many genres and allusions in fiction: “Somewhere between autobiography and novel, her debut combines gritty

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