INVERTED CONVERSIONS - READING THE BIBLE AND WRITING THE LESBIAN SUBJECT IN ORANGES-ARE-NOT-THE-ONLY-FRUIT

The prominence of the Bible as intertext in Oranges Are Not the Only F ruit, both a coming-of-age and a coming-out story, has puzzled readers . This paper argues that Winterson's articulation of a lesbian subject is actually inseparable from her revisionary engagement of the Bible. By repeatedly turning and re-turning several types of narrative about the origins of identity and story-making, Winterson reconstructs both some biblical texts and a hallmark of the gay and lesbian literary tr adition as precursors for the prophetic voice of the main character.