Oranges and Other Truths: A Journey of Identity and Defiance

The title "Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit" relates to Jeanette’s sexuality, but it’s more than that. Her mother has a very fixed, binary way of seeing things and it’s about how as she grows up she begins to see the world differently than how her mother sees it, so there’s a clash between her and her mother. Oranges are significant in the book. Whenever Jeanette is going through something tough, her mother says: “Let's have an orange" and offers her an orange. For example, when Jeanette goes temporarily deaf, that’s what she does: she offers her an orange. When she is bullied because she is different from other students, she does the same thing. Her mother is a very neglectful woman who is obsessed with religion. Orange is a symbolism of religion and world view and sexuality. Her mother always argues. Everything she designs, does, says, and watches, is based on her religion.

To her mother, oranges are the only fruit in the sense that there’s no diversity or tolerance for the different people in her book. There’s only one way of seeing things for her mother. We see that Jeanette comes from a limited background. She falls in love with a girl called Melanie eventually, but homosexuality is outside of her mother's realm of understanding. She believes in the idea of possession, that her daughter is possessed by demons. After her exorcism it is very painful to read, instead of comforting her, she offers Jeanette an orange.

Later, when she sees Melanie on the bus by chance, Melanie asks: “Want an orange?” She offers her an orange, and that’s highly symbolic. It means Melanie has accepted the kind of position that her mother has. Melanie starts to resemble her mother. Jeanette refuses the orange and runs away. She feels betrayed. Eventually, she reclaims the idea of orange. We see that she seems to transform the idea of orange as consolation.